Quick and Safe Browsing!!!...

Hi all,
Do you people suggest me some of precautions which are to be taken when surfing net. I always get worried when a link is there, I do not open any as they can have virus affected or Spyware. I am looking for safe ways of surfing. Nowadays Internet as there is rise in internet usage so is the threats.
Thanks!

Re : Quick and Safe Browsing!!!

The best thing to do is always insure that your antivirus, antispyware and firewall are kept up to date. I also like McAfee's SiteAdvisor. It's a plugin for your browser that highlights potentially dangerous sites that McAfee have discovered. I use it for reference all the time.
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Wyvern Computers- The Power of The Dragon

Re : Quick and Safe Browsing!!!

The only thing to bear in mind with virus checkers is some are now so intrusive and processing intensive that on reasonably old computers or even 'middle aged' ones the virus checkers slow your computer down and hog resources more than the viruses themselves!

Also bear in mind that if you are behind a router that works it should only send authorised traffic to your machine so if you are confident of the set-up less people may need virus checkers than they actually believe.

Re : Quick and Safe Browsing!!!

I agree totally. I've used some horribly intrusive and resource hogging antivirus programs. My favourite all in one suite was Norton Internet Security 2003. After that the program became so resource heavy that I couldn't do anything. I discovered a new program recently called ThreatFire that doesn't work in the same way as a conventional antivirus applications so is a bit less resource heavy. Apparently it works by analysing program behaviour rather than checking files against a list of known viruses. I've only given it a few months trial though so I couldn't say how effective it really was.

With well configured routers I agree that hackers and such threats shouldn't ever make it to your PC but you still have to be aware of potential viruses/spyware that are hidden within programs or webpages that you download.

I tend to just stick with AVG Free and ZoneAlarms now but I guess on older machines as long as you have an antivirus program you are protected. If you have spyware you can download a spyware remover for a one-off run and then remove it again. Most active monitoring spyware applications don't seem to catch the spyware anyway! The place I used to work at had some old PII computers that happily ran Windows 98 and AVG 7.
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Wyvern Computers- The Power of The Dragon