“If you own a Windows PC, you need to have a current anti-virus product installed and running. There’s no longer a debate about it, no longer a way to be ‘really careful what you open’ and do without it,” James Derk reports for Scripps Howard News Service. “There are dozens of products out there for you to use and even some excellent free ones like AVG Free and Avast. It is such an important issue that Microsoft will be adding anti-virus to the next version of Windows as a pre-installed accessory.”
Derk reports, “With an Apple [Macintosh] computer, anti-virus software is purely optional in my opinion. I know there are some divergent opinions on this and there’s no harm in having it if you can afford it. But since there are no Apple viruses in the wild and the machine is designed to be more secure than a Windows machine, there’s little risk.”
“On spyware, this also is a Windows machine issue,” Derk reports. “This can be a far more complex issue depending upon whether you are already infected or simply trying to prevent an infection. If you already are infected, you may be able to eliminate the infection by using three or four products (there isn’t one that does a an effective removal job by itself.) You can try AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy and Microsoft Anti-Spyware beta for free, then add Webroot’s Spy Sweeper and perhaps PestPatrol. A skilled professional can be required to get rid of some infections. And some infections require a complete erasure of the PC and reinstallation of the operating system and everything on it.”
Derk reports, “Again, Macs are mostly immune from spyware and pop-up issues,” Derk reports.
Full article here.
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Microsoft has been promising better security for years with each successive Windows packaging change. If you think Windows Vista is going to magically fix the problems, good luck to you.
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