A free lunch?

Throughout the last few years the threat of viruses and spam mail on computers has been more widely publicised. Even if you rarely use computers you would be surprised the effect it could have on your home or business. The cost of protecting you and your business due to the sheer 'fear factor' imposed on us by the media seems quite high. However this is not the case. It's the cost of not protecting yourself which could be the greatest of all! With technology advancing so rapidly in order to combat the threat of hackers, viruses and spyware, often it seems quite daunting to deal with all the problems we can face in our homes and businesses. Often we simply have no idea what to look out for and even with our attempts at 'fire-walling' and 'virus scans', unethical hackers are still getting through and corrupting files on PC's worldwide, and this affects even huge multi-national corporation, not just the home user. An unprotected machine can be infected within a matter of minutes - computer experts have tested this theory by setting up a computer with no protection and putting it on-line. Within twenty minutes various hackers and bugs were probing the system looking for weak spots to get into the system. Recently it has been suggested that by 2007 the internet will crash as it will not be able to cope with the sheer volume of irritating spam and viruses people are putting on it. This seems unlikely at first but when reports suggest that 70% of the Internet is currently taken up by spam we begin to understand why. The time to take a stand against the spread of viruses, spam and spyware is now, and it is down to every user worldwide to do their bit to help. With businesses giving us incentives to use their services on-line (as ultimately it costs them less and it is more convenient for us!) the threat of intrusion into our computers is becoming ever more serious. Banks, insurers, and even small local businesses are taking their products and services online and taking advantage of e-commerce in order to reach a wider market. Customer confidence in this new marketplace is not going to grow unless the average user feels safe online. There are a lot of free tools out there on the 'web' that promise to clean your machine of spyware, malware and viruses. Some of them are good, some of them bad and others are downright ugly! Unfortunately some unethical hackers have got in on the act of providing free software (don't confuse these people with ethical hackers who provide their services for free by writing software that anyone can use and is genuinely useful to everyone!). Be aware that the 'free spyware removal tool' you have just downloaded and installed may be just a mask for a backdoor to your machine! How do you tell the difference between good 'free' software and bad then? Well...it isn't easy most of the time, but if you look for software developed by the 'free and open source foundation' you won't go far wrong, as all of this software is 'open source' and so the code written to make the software is viewable by anyone - this means that unethical hackers can't hide any nasty surprises in the software.