Hi Abuelita ... It can be a little confusing at times on which programs are good to use on your computer. The difficulty is that different programs work well with each other, while others might want to fight against each other ... then top that off with the fact that a program that works good on one computer just has problems when it is run on another identical brand and model computer... It's just that no two computers are exactly alike in what is on the hard drives, even the same programs can have different components when run on a different machine...Does make it hard for us to find a simple solution and we just have to do a trial and error at times with programs.
You will want an
anti-virus program, they are good at preventing or removing virus programs, but don't do much for malware or spyware or adware and many times they also miss trojans.... each of these different types of trouble makers have a different name because they each do different things.... perhaps replicating themselves using our address books and sending themselves to everyone in the address book (think trojan or virus) or spying on us for ID theft or other headaches...
You will want a good
anti-malware, anti-spyware and anti-adware program. Spyware and malware like to keep track of your key strokes so they can steal your passwords or bank account numbers... Adware likes to keep track of sites you visit or items you research, so they can report back to their sender that information and you get bombarded with emails and advertisements about those subject matters....
You will want a good firewall program that will protect you both for incoming and outgoing messages... The firewall with WinXP protects only incoming messages and the Vista firewall protects both ways.
If you look at my signature, you'll see the programs I use as they all work well together and are top rated in independent testings. But there are others which could work quite well on your machine. A single site which has all of these different free programs is
http://www.filehippo.com where you can see the different ones, read up on each one, and be directed to the download site to get each one....
Anti-virus: I would choose
Avast personal or Avira Anti-Vir. Some folks like
AVG, but it doesn't test as well as it used to do.
Anti-Malware: A must have is
SpywareBlaster (one word) - you just check for updates, ensure to set all protection and close out the program as it is a blocker of currently 12,444 bad sites or bad guy invaders. Also might want to use
Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware,
SuperAntiSpyware,
Spybot S&D (Search and Destroy).... these are manually updated and run in the free versions, pay versions do auto updating and may do active monitoring of the system.
Threatfire is a monitoring program, good for trojans, and actively scans your computer while online. It has slowed some computers and works fine on others.
Firewall:The two top free firewalls are Comodo Firewall and also Online Armor. There are several others which are pretty good as well.
Most of my readings and my personal experience tend to say that individual programs for specific trouble maker types is the best way to go. There are suites of programs that are out there (mostly pay programs) that try to do a lot of different things and have not done so well in protecting users, but they are easy to use and maintain since everything is all wrapped up in one program and so folks tend to go to them for the simplicity... my experience is to stay with single subject programs, but we each have to decide for ourselves.
That is a lot of info, sorry, but protection is a large subject since there are so many different types of trouble makers out there that each do different types of harm to our systems. If you were to do a Google search for "free computer protection programs" you'll find a lot of different articles on the subject... None are identical in what they recommend, you just have to do a lot of reading and get a comfortable feeling with the different programs out there. We can't 100% protect ourself, but I will say that with the group of programs I use I feel very well covered and protected and have really had a very minimum of stuff get on my computers or the ones I take care of.....
Good luck with your research, just cover those couple of areas and be careful in how you handle email and how you behave on the web and you will likely have very little problems. Keep a clean system and defrag every once in awhile and you should have a happy computer experience.....
