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As I mentioned earlier, computer viruses are another form of malicious software that can harm your computer and steal your personal information, just like spyware can. As a part of protecting your home computer, you need to have a good anti-virus software package installed. If you don't have anti-virus software already, you can find a list of reputable anti-virus software vendors at this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/49500. Of course, asking which brand of anti-virus software to choose is a lot like asking someone which model of car to drive. While each one may look a bit different, the different anti-virus software packages listed in this link will all do a serviceable job of protecting your computer from computer viruses. For a home computer, you can't go wrong with Symantec, McAfee, Computer Associates, or Trend Micro, to name a few. And the best part about using this link to start your search is that all the software listed is known to work with the Windows operating system. Be sure to look for anti-virus software that offers real-time protection, which means that it scans files on your computer whenever you double-click on them or open them using your web browser or word processor. In addition, you should configure your anti-virus software to run a manual scan of your computer at least once a week, just to be sure that nothing slips through the cracks. Just as important as installing anti-virus software is the need to keep it up-to-date. A computer virus is nothing more than a small computer program that somebody wrote, and people are writing new ones all the time. Because of this, anti-virus software needs to be constantly updated with new definitions that teach the software how to recognize any new viruses that have been found. All of the most recent anti-virus products can schedule automatic updates of these definitions on a regular basis. This is just like configuring Automatic Updates for your operating system, only now you're doing it for your anti-virus software. As you can see in Figure 3, I've configured the anti-virus software on my personal computer to check for new anti-virus definitions on a daily basis. Figure 3. Check for New Anti-Virus Definitions Frequently!
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