The concerns of Internet Security have grown today like never before. Despite the continuous attempts of Internet community, the threats are increasing and getting more and more vicious by each passing day. Newer viruses, spyware, Trojans, backdoors, rootkits, browser hijackers are being developed, which are capable of devastating any Security attempts. It is a complete jungle out there, where the only defense seems to depend upon how much care and restraint you can exercise while being online.

There are many Internet Security tools available in the market. Some of them are outstanding. But still, none of them is perfect. It cannot be. The best protection is in your own hands. Follow a disciplined approach while using Internet services.

1. Be careful about using MS Outlook. Outlook is more susceptible to worms than other e-mail programs, unless you have efficient Anti-Virus programs running. Use Pegasus or Thunderbird (by Mozilla), or a web-based program such as Hotmail or Yahoo.

2. Take special precaution while dealing with email attachments. Be cautious about attachments with a double extension, such as txt, vb, jpg or exe, as the system will only recognize the extension to the extreme right, and run the file as such. Double extensions are often a good indicator that the file is malicious.

3. Do not use disks that other people gave you, even from work. The disk could be infected with a virus. Of course, you can run a virus scan on it first to check it out, but AV programs are not 100% effective.

4. Do not download software from just any website. If it is a reputable site that you trust, you are probably safe. The threat is not only from software; even other file types like .txt, .doc, .xml can have infections.

5. Be careful when surfing. You might get a malicious script from a webpage without even getting a warning. Tweak your Browser settings for maximum safety.

6. Try to balance paranoia with common sense. Some people get really weird about viruses, spyware, etc. It’s just a computer! Back up your data and follow these steps, and it shouldn’t be a big problem.

7. Setup your download manager to scan a download first before you open it. When you click to download a file from Internet, generally browser gives two options. To save it on the Disk or To Open the file with the default program. Always choose the first option, because, it ensures that the download is first scanned with your antivirus, before saving it on the disk.

Windows XP is definitely the most popular OS as on date. There are very many reasons for it. Even after the launch of Windows Vista Operating system about a year back, most of the PCs are run on Windows XP till date. But despite Windows XP being the most popular operating system, as time progresses and you continue to work on your XP, it shows a trait of slowing down. Processes get slowed down, programs take more time to open up, the time taken by your system to boot up increases and other problems start appearing. There are many reasons like viruses, spyware, memory resident programs etc. Here is a list of things you can easily do to make your windows XP computer run faster.

Defragmentation: Your Windows Xp stores files and folders in the form of bits and bytes. These files and folders gets deleted and written over time, and after some time the data is stored in a haphazard manner. Defragentation is a process, which rearranges the data on your hard disk so as to optimize its use. Related bits and bytes are stored at nearby places, so as to ensure easy and fast access. You can easily defragment your hard disk with the help of the windows utility, which comes bundled with the Windows Xp operating system. Tehere is absolutely no need to buy any defragmentation program from the market.

Disable file indexing: File indexing is used by Windows XP to quickly search your documents, when the need arises. Although it seems like a process to save your time, but actually it is a process which is seldom used by the Windows Xp users. Actually it it takes a heavy toll on your PC resources. You can easily and safely disable this feature, without compromising on the features. Even after disabling this feature, you will easily be able to search and find your files and folders without much difficulty.

NTFS file system: There are two file systems used by Windows XP to store files; NTFS and FAT32. NTFS is definitely faster. Use it. Even if you are running your files under FAT32 system, it is not a difficult process to convert FAT32 file system to NTFS. This single change in your file structure will considerably improve your Windows XP performance and increase its speed.

Disk Clean: Disk Cleaning is an exercise, which deletes unwanted stuff and shapes up your drive. Use it more often than not. It is worthwhile exercise, which should be done regularly. In fact I have been doing it on my PC once in a month.

Windows Prefetch folder: It is a process, by which Windows XP keeps on accumulating pointers to files and folders often used by you so as to quickly open them when you require them. But over time, it get cluttered with old pointers, which are not used by you now. The best way is to clean it.

Remove Spyware: Its too obvious. Spywares are the malicious scripts, which are inserted in your PC by external websites, with a primary purpose of collecting various data about the online behavior so as to use it to either serve unwanted stuff in the form of ads to you or make some fraud upon you.

Remove unwanted software: They simply consume more of your HDD and RAM space. Get rid of the unwanted software codes frequently. This can easily be done from within the Windows XP control panel. This will definitely improve your Windows CP performance and make your PC fast.

Remove unnecessary programs from Start up: They consume lots of RAM and slow down your boot up process. Look for cleaning your system tray.
Turn off Windows XP graphics: Windows XP comes loaded with lots of fancy graphics, which slow don its speed considerably. If you are looking for speed, you may not be needing them at all.

Following these tips, will surely improve your PC performance.

Spyware are the programs, which covertly gathers user information through the user’s Internet connection without his or her knowledge. They generally come bundled as a hidden component of freeware or shareware programs, which you download from unsecured and un-trusted sites.

Once they have been installed on your system, Spyware programs constantly monitor your activities on your computer and send that private information in the background to the person who has planted that spyware on your computer. Spyware can also gather information about e-mail addresses and even passwords and credit card numbers. They are the real threat to your online privacy and some of them have been instrumental in causing some of the greatest Internet Scams.

Anti-spyware, the Ray of Hope:

With the growing trends of E-commerce and online transactions, spyware programs are becoming the biggest online threats. And with their growth, lots of Anti-spyware programs are now available on the Internet. Many of them are free and many of them are paid.

Personally, I am not in favor of using FREE anti-spyware programs, because they do not get updated as fast as the paid software and the lack of customer support, which is very essential. Internet Security is not to be taken lightly, and spending a few bucks today on your security, might be an intelligent investment instead of repenting later.

Having said that, if you are inclined to use a FREE anti-spyware, I would recommend following Free Anti-Spyware Programs.

Best Free Anti-spyware Programs:

1. Spybot Search & Destroy: Freeware spyware removal and detction program for Windows.

2. AVG Anti-Spyware Free: Free anti-spyware program for Windows, created by GriSoft.

3. Spyware Terminator: Free anti-spyware program with real-time protection, manual and scheduled scan,
safe quarantine, automatic update, etc.

4. Spyware Detector: Scans for spyware/malware for free; spyware removal is not free though.

5. A-squared free: Removes Trojans, Worms, Keyloggers, Dialer and Spyware/Adware from your PC. The free version does not offer real-time protection.

6. SuperAntispyware: Free anti-spyware program for home use; runs on Windows.

7. Browser Hijack Retaliator: Internet Explorer protection. Prevents IE from being ‘taken over’ by malicious scripts and ActiveX controls.

8. Arovax AntiSpyware: Free anti-spyware program for Windows; sponsored by user forum.

9. SpywareBlaster: Free windows program which protects against spyware: prevents the installation of ActiveX-based spyware, adware, browser hijackers, dialers, and other potentially unwanted software. blocks spyware/tracking cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox, restricts the actions of potentially unwanted sites in Internet Explorer.

10. Damage Cleanup Engine: Freeware spyware removal program for Windows. Terminates malware instances in memory, removes malware entries from registry and system files, scans and deletes malware from local hard drives.

Your passwords are the keys you use to access personal information that you’ve stored on your computer and in your online accounts. Do I need to highlight the importance of creating and managing strong passwords?

If criminals or other malicious users steal this information, they can use your name to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or pose as you in online transactions. In many cases you would not notice these attacks until it is too late.

Why are strong passwords needed?

Passwords can be the weakest link in a computer security scheme. Strong passwords are important because password cracking tools continue to improve and the computers used to crack passwords are more powerful. With each passing days, new stronger and more intelligent password breaking tools and being developed, which work on different algorithms to break any password. Passwords that once took weeks to break can now be broken in hours or sometime even in minutes.

Password cracking software use one of three approaches:

Intelligent guessing, Dictionary attacks and automation that tries every possible combination of characters. Given enough time, the automated method can crack any, yes I mean ANY, password.

Passphrase: Creating a strong, memorable password in 5 easy steps

1. Think of a sentence that you can remember. This will be the basis of your strong password or pass phrase. Use a memorable sentence, such as “The second letter of English Alphabet is B”

2. Take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new, nonsensical word. Using the example above, you’d get: “tsloeaib.

3. Add complexity by mixing uppercase and lowercase letters. It becomes “TsloEAiB”

4. Add some numbers. I add them after every two letters. You get “Ts2lo4EA6iB8″. See the patterns, but they are hard to guess.

5. Finally, substitute some special characters. You can use symbols that look like letters or punctuation marks. “!Ts2lo4EA6iB8?”

See, it is now 14 characters in length.

Since it can be difficult to remember a ton of passwords, I recommend using Roboform. It will store all of your passwords in an encrypted format and allow you to use just one master password to access all of them. It is a small program, which you have to download from their website and then it works like charm.

It will also automatically fill in forms on Web pages, and you can even get versions that allow you to take your password list with you on your PDA, phone or a USB key.

Your passwords are the keys you use to access personal information that you’ve stored on your computer and in your online accounts.

Do I need to highlight their importance?

If criminals or other malicious users steal this information, they can use your name to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or pose as you in online transactions. In many cases you would not notice these attacks until it is too late.

Why are strong passwords needed?

Passwords can be the weakest link in a computer security scheme. Strong passwords are important because password cracking tools continue to improve and the computers used to crack passwords are more powerful. Passwords that once took weeks to break can now be broken in hours or sometime minutes.

Password cracking software use one of three approaches:

Intelligent guessing, Dictionary attacks and automation that tries every possible combination of characters. Given enough time, the automated method can crack any, yes I mean ANY, password.

What makes a Strong Password:

The general rule for making a strong password is to make difficult to guess. It is true for human driven password breaking attempts as well as software attempts.

You can follow these useful tips for making strong passwords.

Combine letters, numbers, and symbols. The greater variety of characters that you have in your password, the harder it is to guess.

Use the entire keyboard, not just the most common characters. Passwords are stronger if you choose all the symbols, including punctuation marks.

Make it lengthy. Each character that you add to your password increases the protection that it provides many times over. Your passwords should be 8 or
more characters in length; 14 characters or longer is ideal.

Passphrase: Creating a strong, memorable password in 5 easy steps

1. Think of a sentence that you can remember. This will be the basis of your strong password or pass phrase. Use a memorable sentence, such as “The second letter of English Alphabet is B”

2. Take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new, nonsensical word. Using the example above, you’d get: “tsloeaib.

3. Add complexity by mixing uppercase and lowercase letters. It becomes “TsloEAiB”

4. Add some numbers. I add them after every two letters. You get “Ts2lo4EA6iB8″. See the patterns, but they are hard to guess.

5. Finally, substitute some special characters. You can use symbols that look like letters or punctuation marks. “!Ts2lo4EA6iB8?”

See, it is now 14 characters in length.

Since it can be difficult to remember a ton of passwords, I recommend using Roboform. It will store all of your passwords in an encrypted format and allow you to use just one master password to access all of them.

It will also automatically fill in forms on Web pages, and you can even get versions that allow you to take your password list with you on your PDA, phone or a USB key.