Consequences of a Highly Active Profile

Richard Smith from American Acceptance Mortgage recently wrote a blog post titled “AR Spam and Predators”. The post reminded me that one of the consequences of having a highly visible profile is the tremendous increase of spam and unsolicited contacts you receive. SPAM email often carries dangerous links and attachments.

Internet browsing may also occasionally and unknowingly navigate to crafty malicious websites that flood your computer with ads, malware, spyware, keyloggers and others.

Beyond the solicitations that Richard detailed in his blog post there are a number of unscrupulous people on the internet that have the ideas of doing much worse. We need to be aware of the risks as well as what we click and link to. It consider it a wise investment to make sure our equipment is protected.

While most PCs have built in virus protection and firewall software they do a mediocre job at best. It is even more important if you are active daily on the internet. I recommend installing a third party security suite and keep on-top of your updates and renewals. Unless you have a Mac, if you don’t have a full security suite please do yourself a favor a get one this week.

If you do have suite or are considering getting one I really like a program called Ad-Aware. Ad-Aware always finds hazards that my security suite doesn’t. I have been very impressed with a number of applications Lavasoft has developed. Ad-Aware is by far the best and most useful.

The best thing about Ad-Aware is it has a FREE Version. You can read more about the software and the free download here.

What other tools do you use to protect yourself and your PC?

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Image Credit: zodman