By Niall Roche
The explosive growth of the Internet has meant that thousands of people are today experiencing the joys of being online for the first time.
With growth there always comes pain. Be it your growing pains as a child or the growth and development of this part of our culture called the Internet.
Firstly we need to quickly explain what the Internet is and where it came from. The Internet is the offspring of a military project called
Arpanet. Arpanet was designed to provide reliable communication during global nuclear war. A vast network of interconnected computers was
set up all over the world to allow the various branches of US and NATO forces to communicate with each other.
Nuclear war never came (thankfully) and the world was left with a massive network of computers all connected together with nothing to do.
Colleges and universities started to use these computers for sharing research internationally. From there it grew and spread outside colleges
to local homes and businesses. The World Wide Web was born and its father was a guy called Tim Berners Lee.
When you're connected to the Internet you're sharing a vast network with hundreds of millions of other users. This shared network provides
resources that 15 years ago were never thought possible. Unfortunately when something is shared its open to abuse. On the Internet this abuse
comes from hackers and virus creators. Their sole intent is to cause chaos and/or harm to your computer system and millions of other computer
systems all over the world.
How do you combat this? You need an Internet security system. This might sound complicated but your Internet security system will be quite
straigtforward being comprised of just 2 - 3 Internet security products. We'll look at each of these products in more detail now:
AntiVirus Software
The first and most critical element of your Internet security system is antivirus software. If you don't have up-to-date antivirus software
on your PC you're asking for trouble. 300 new viruses appear each month and if you're not constantly protecting your system against this threat
your computer will become infected with at least one virus - it's only a matter of time.
Antivirus software scans your PC for signatures of a virus. A virus signature is the unique part of that virus. It can be a a file name,
how the virus behaves or the size of the virus file itself. Good antivirus software will find viruses that haven't yet infected your PC and
eliminate the ones that have.
Antivirus software can only protect your computer from viruses trying to infect it via email, CD-Rom, floppy disk, Word documents or other
types of computer files. Antivirus software alone will not keep your computer 100% safe. You also need to use firewall software.
Part II - Firewall Software and PopUp Blocker
About The Author
http://www.affiliate-advocate.com is run by Niall Roche. The site offers reviews of affiliate
marketing ebooks and software as well as advice and tips for new and existing affiliate marketers.
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