It’s a bit of an open secret in the computer security industry that the number-one most effective tool for protecting your computer from viruses and malware is your own brain.  Firewalls, antivirus scanners, and so on definitely have their place, but those computer users who never seem to have major problems (while your computer seems to get more bugs in it than an ant farm) aren’t safer because they have superior antivirus software–it’s because they’ve learned to break these three common bad computing habits.
1) The habit: Downloading “free” products that cost you more than money

Remember those animated smileys that seemed so cute?  Remember how you asked yourself, “they’re free, so why not try it out?  I can always uninstall it later.”  Unfortunately there are a lot of products out there that claim to be free but carry all kinds of computer-hogging spyware or malicious bugs.  Uninstalling them in the conventional way won’t stop the problems they cause; in the worst cases, nothing will fix the problem except a reformat and reinstalling your operating system.
Read more…