The Tip author is absolutely correct that you need a good AV program. But suggesting it is okay to use 2 Anti-spyware programs is misleading. You should only have 1 anti-spyware program “running” or “in-resident” (also called “active scanning” or “real time scanning”) at any given time. It is fine to have more AS programs installed to use for manual “on-demand” scanning, but not 2 or more “running” at once.

The Tip author is incorrect, however, to imply that you don’t need a software based firewall if you are behind a router. This is not true in most cases, except, perhaps, if your PC is behind a “corporate” (read: very expensive, professionally maintained, dedicated) firewall. The typical firewall used in home and small offices sees EVERYTHING on the “trusted” or local side of the firewall as safe data. This means that malware on an infected computer on your network (everything on your side of the router is your network) is free to seek out and infect all the other computers (especially if sharing is enabled) on your network. The only way to prevent this if your computer has a software based firewall, such as Windows Firewall, ZoneAlarm, or Comodo Firewall.

And while this tip focuses on AV and AS programs, in addition to a software based firewall, everyone should also be using a spam blocker and pop-up blocker in their browsers (or some other capable pop-up blocker) enabled.

And of course, the most important anti-malware resource is you, the user. You must “practice safe computing” – at all times – that is, you must keep your systems patched, updated, scanned and blocked always, never open attachments or downloads without scanning first, and stay away sites badguys wallow in, such as porn and p2p sites.

-b