Free Virus Protection Package for Windows

The most logical and ironically the least technical explanation for how frequently the Windows operating system gets infected is its popularity. When a less-than-friendly person decides to write a virus or another piece of malware, they go for the highest number of computers infected before the antivirus software programs catch onto the virus and find a way around it. This means that they write the virus for the most popular operating system.

So now that you know why you have to protect your Windows systems, let's go over some of the excuses that you may have been using up until this point in order to shirk your responsibilities and leave your machines in their current unprotected state.

"I don’t know where to get my computer the needed protection."

Seriously. I have a real problem with believing that one, and no I won’t buy that bridge from you either. I don’t care if it is located in the heart of Brooklyn. If you really meant it, then you must be completely new to the world of computers. In that case you can check out the list below to get what you need.

"I don’t want to shell out for the cost of an antivirus protection suite." Have you priced those things anytime lately? They're not exactly what I would call a budget-friendly item. If they want to charge that much for the software they can find themselves another sucker. I let the 60 day trial expire.

Keep reading. You're going to be surprised, big time.

Getting Evil

Well, I could go over the costs of the software versus the cost of losing your machine, but that requires knowledge of a lot of variables (cost of machine's primary use, cost of software you choose, etc…) and the odds are that you would not listen to me anyway. Even if I told you that you could easily afford it by giving up your morning lattes for a few weeks, or even just two or or really. So before you get the chance to feel all smug I'm going to circumvent you using the only 100 percent sure fire method, by agreeing with you. The prices are too high, so in order to make this more universal and accessible to you all I am only going to show you free software.

"I don’t know where to find virus protection software online that I can trust." I may not be a master coder, but if I was trying to get a virus out to the unwitting members of the public, I would disguise it as virus protection software.

Wow, have you got the evil genius mentality down cold or what! I admire that, and yes, a few evil programmers have thought of that very use, but each and every one of the programs that I'm about to show you has stood the test of time, so if you pick from the list below, the odds will be low that you are walking into a trap like that.

Now that you have no reason at all for passing up on protecting your investment, and yes your computer is an investment, we can talk about some of the protection that you may want to download and install on your computer. Let us get down to the nitty gritty and go over the options.

The anti-virus software

This is one of your first lines of defense in the world of the computer. It scans the system for known virus codes. Once it has found a virus, it will tag its location, and depending on your virus and your software, it may even get rid of the virus software without any extra outside prompting. At the very least, it will identify your virus so that you can find the correct method of eliminating the malicious code.

The recommendation for this one is Clamwin. Clamwin is a free and open source virus protection application that you can use to scan your system. The software is not particularly large by itself, but you may find that the virus defining updates can take a while. It will update once initially after you install it, but after that you are the one who has to remember to update it manually at regular intervals. I suggest that you put it in your calendar. Overall, this software will do the job more than adequately. It is also relatively user-friendly and will even add icons to as many places as you want it to.

Now it is time to move on to your firewall package. Since I am not a complete and total sadist and I do not want to take up all of the space left on your hard drive in order to protect it -- after all, that would just defeat the point of all of this protection -- I am going to give you the other things that you need with the firewall software. I'll keep it nice and simple for my favorite readers. The suite that we are going to use to cover the rest of the bases is called AVG Free, and it comes with some other pretty important protection on board.

It comes with your firewall, of course, which helps you to keep out sneaky back door attacks on any open parts of your machine.

Next is the spam filter. You hate spam, don’t you? Of course you do. We all hate that annoying and worthless waste of text that wiggles its way into our inboxes daily. Any extra levels of protection that you can put between the annoyances and your very own eyeballs is worthwhile. Bye, bye spam, hello check inbox. I do not think that we really need to cover the concept in too much detail since most of us know what a spam filter is already.

Chat and instant messaging protection is probably something that you may not give a lot of thought; after all, only a very few people think of that as a potential security threat to their system, but the truth is that when you open up access between two machines you are leaving yourself with a potential vulnerability. The great news is that AVG Free can help to protect your system. The bad news is that it will only protect you from the hazards while chatting with ICQ or MSN Messenger, which is not really a wide range of services, and bypasses altogether protection for what is arguably the most popular instant messaging system on the planet: AOL’s AIM.

Conclusion

Now when you look at the AVG Free software suite you may have noticed that it comes with a virus protection program of its very own. If you happen to be very hard up on hard drive space you could just use it, but personal use of both of the suites has shown that Clamwin can find things that AVG’s virus scan has missed in at least two separate cases. It may seem redundant, but it is better to be safe then it is to be sorry when it comes to these things.

Now that your system has some reliable protection you can sit back and relax, right? Just do whatever you want to online with no fear, eh? Well, no, you probably still can’t be an irresponsible user online. Skip the illicit downloads of music and movies. Do not open attachments from any email senders that you do not know and be generally skeptical of any shady sites that are known to be less than safe to visit.

To summarize my point, having protection is no reason to act irresponsibly online. If you fail to care for your computer systems, then in the end, no piece of software will be able to save you from your own folly.

If your Windows system is not protected right now, I suggest that you go and take care of these things right away. After all, you do not have any more excuses to let it slide even one more hour, and definitely not one more day. It won’t even cost you a dime, so you have no need to even get up to get your credit card or log into your PayPal account.

Let me answer one final objection you might have, even at this point, to getting protection for your Windows PC. No, the built-in protections that come with your system do not count as protection for your system. I don’t care how much hype it has going for it, because it also has one glaringly fatal flaw. It is a standard part of the operating system. As you may recall, I explained that one of the major reasons that Windows is such a tempting target is popularity. This means that any piece of software that comes with it is well known by the writers of and planned for, when the malicious code is penned.