Preventative Measures To Combat Malware Infection

Malware is a short name for malicious software. It can be defined as any kind of illegal piece of software that intends to enter a computer system without your consent in order to cause damage or steal information. Every year computer users are losing billions of dollars to system failure, productivity loss, and financial thefts caused by malware infections. In spite of this, many of you may seem oblivious to the potential danger and magnitude of this problem. A survey found that most PC owners are over-confident when it comes to dealing with malware. You would be surprised to know that more than 75% of PC users who feel confident that they have taken correct preventive measures are not adequately protected from malware attacks.

Computer Viruses, spyware, Trojans, worms, spyware, adware and criminal software are all different kinds of malware. All these may show different features but the intent is usually the same. They are mostly transmitted through Internet, through email, and through websites.

You can prevent as well as combat malware infection by incorporating the following measures:

• Install reliable anti-virus and anti-spyware immediately: You must not operate your PC without installing these critical protection tools. You must always keep these tools ON while accessing the internet. You must also make sure that you update your software on a regular basis. This will help you protect your PC from all the latest threats. Finally, it’s a good idea to perform a thorough full-system scan once a week to weed out any malware that may have crept in.

• Be very cautious of what you download: Online criminals try all kinds of deception to gain entry into your system and they are very good at it. They even use names of legitimate programs and files, such as iexplore.exe or outlook.exe, to deceive you. So, you must be very careful of the source from which you download files.

• Remove unwanted programs: It is a good idea to scan all programs on your PC to observe which programs are residing on your PC and the amount of resources they are using.  The more programs on your PC, the more the chances of malware infection because virus and spyware programs are known to take advantage of security loopholes in these unwanted, and usually not updated programs to attack your computer. This is the reason why you must uninstall yahoo toolbar or any other program that you are not using.

• Clean your registry regularly: A large number of virus and spyware programs are known to make changes and add malicious entries to your registry that are difficult to weed out completely. These changes also lead to various kinds of registry errors that disrupt the normal functioning of your computer. It is advised that you clean your Windows registry thoroughly, using a good quality registry cleaning software to combat malware infections. Registry cleaning software have added advantages: it helps you repair and defrag the registry that, in turn, help you make your PC faster and also eliminates other common PC errors.