If you are in any way similar to me (as a technology lover) you have certainly had your “services” requested by loving members of your family, or friends, to “repair” people’s computers. One of the amazing things you discover when you go repair one of those said computers is that they are usually more spyware infested than a tribe of sewer rats.

Sure, in most cases, when the infection hasn’t gotten flesh-deep, you should be able to get rid of most of the problems with anti-malware tools.

One of those said tools that I recommend is Spybot Search & Destroy. To download it just click on the link just before this phrase, or do a web search if you wish, however, be forewarned that there are dozens of similarly named programs that are in reality just malware programs themselves, so it’s safer if you use the link I just gave you.

Another great tool to remove your system from malware is Adaware from Lavasoft. Most of Adaware’s different versions aren’t free, however, one of them (Adaware SE Personal) is. And it does the most important function for no extra money: removes malware. Spybot S&D Combined with Adaware perform an almost certain clean-sweep to your system. However, we all know that removing spyware, isn’t all that there is to it when thinking about securing your PC. To help prevent the infiltration of the said spyware, you need an anti-virus, and Softpedia wrote a nice list and review of 3 of them:

All of them are different, and unfortunately there is no comparison done between them in terms of effectiveness or how frequently is the virus database updated.

However, be advised, even with routine scans with the anti-spyware tools I mentioned, and the constant scanning of an anti-virus, it is still possible (and likely) for your system to become infected at one time or another if you aren’t careful enough about which sites you visit or which programs you use.

From my experience in the past, the #1 and #2 reasons for malware infiltrations in your system are the use of two very popular applications: Internet Explorer 6 and Outlook Express. If you aren’t careful with those two applications of which files or sites you open you can very easily become infected, and it’s no wonder really, they are some of the most used applications in the world, so it’s only natural that they are the most targeted by hackers and the like.

My recommendation, for now, is that you switch to more secure alternatives like the well known Open-Source browser Firefox and the e-mail client by the same organization: Thunderbird.

If you use these two programs I recommended, together with the security tools mentioned before them, you can be certain that your system will be much more secure. And if you install them on your loving family-members’ computers you’ll see that the frequency of their tech-support requests will diminish greatly.