Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Do Free ISP's protect you against viruses?

Virus's can seriously damage your machine and spyware can slow it down and waste disk space (as well as being quite cheeky by spying on your online activity). However many people simply don't bother installing antivirus or antispy/adware programs, in fact I must admit to not doing this until about a year ago, and then pulling out my hair when malware kept re-adding itself to my registry. However, most people expect to have to pay to avoid viruses. Lots of subsciption ISP's place great emphasis on the antivirus and anti-SPAM services they offer, but is the same level of service provided by free ISP's?

Definately - yes. Many free ISP's will provide you with free anti-virus and anti spam protection, after all it is in their interests to protect their servers. Users still need to provide their own anti-virus software and any spy/adware protection software they want. This is the same for subscription ISP's, you are not getting any extra added anti-virus benefits for your own computer. Users need to be proactive and take steps to protect themselves. Many great products are freely availible on the internet for users to download. UK Internet Access has a complementary free Antivirus filter already enabled and offers a free SPAM blocker for it's POP3 email accounts. Many free ISP's charge for these services, so it is worth investigating when you are selecting an ISP. As for protecting your computer whilst using the internet Free Internet Access recommend AVG Free anti virus software. Personally I also use Spybot Search and Destroy, which is also totally free and will keep a check on malicious programs attempting to install themselves .

For more information about computer security check out the bbc website.

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