Tips to protect your computer online
Several new viruses have popped up over the past couple of weeks that attack known weaknesses in software that everybody uses online. Most of the computers I see coming in for virus cleanups are usually out of date on at least one of these programs.
In order to stay safe online, it is not good enough to simply have an up-to-date anti-virus program. You need to make sure that your computer is up to date. Turn on Automatic updates within Windows. But, also go to windows updates (open Internet Explorer, go to the Tools menu and select Windows Updates) and do a manual check. Automatic Updates does not always install Service Packs and Internet Explorer updates. These kinds of updates are huge and should be installed to ensure your Operating system is protected against known security flaws.
Next, make sure you have the latest versions of other web applications. Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat, and Sun Java have all been exploited recently. You need to make sure you are up to date on each of them. Go to their websites (www.adobe.com and www.java.com) to make sure you have the latest version. If you use any other web browser (Chrome, Mozilla, Opera, etc), go to their websites to make sure you have the latest version of those as well.
Be very careful with file sharing applications, like uTorrent. These file sharing applications may let you get “free” music and software (some of which may be illegally shared and violating copyrights), but you are also opening your computer up to a huge potential source of viruses. The files you download from these file sharing applications are actually on other home user computers. Just think, if your computer is infected and you have a file sharing app running, you may be spreading the virus to others on the network…the same may happen to you.
If you are on dial-up and need to update your system, but the downloads are just too large, please give us a call. We can perform a complete system update and look for any other potential problems for you. we have several customers on dial up that bring their systems in every 6 months to get all of their applications updated and a quick tune-up.