With the end of the worst month for viruses we have ever seen, we had a look at how to protect your system. The important aspects are to have an anti-virus and to keep it, and your operating system, fully up-to-date with upgrades and patches. We went through a lot of callers and three questions kept being raised.

Microsoft Outlook attachment security.

Microsoft’s reaction to email bourne viruses was to to block access to all attachments. We recommend Internet Explorer users upgrade to IE6, Service Pack 1, but when you do you may hit this problem. The fix is easy and we’ve posted it here.

Firewalls

A firewall is essential to keeping your computer secure on the net. Windows XP has a basic built in firewall and there are plenty of free and commercial firewall products. One popular free program is Zone Alarm.

Mal-Ware

Many computers we see at the moment are ridden with all sorts of spying and advertising propgrams that sneak onto your computer. Even if you are comfortable with having people spying on you, much of these programs slow and sometimes crash your computer. Adaware and Spybot are two very useful programs to help you keep your computer free from these things.

Thanks to all the listeners and callers, our apologies to those who couldn’t get through. Our next spot should be around 27 September. If you’d like to kept informed of our upcoming advice spots, subscribe to our newsletter.