Hey there Internet surfers. Shannon McCormick on the Studio Dell Home channel. If you're like me, chances are good that you've ventured online for some of your buying needs this past holiday season. In fact, online shopping has become increasingly popular as consumers avoid long checkout lines and parking lot nightmares.
However, online computer fraud complaints, particularly online auction fraud, is on the rise. According to the Federal Trade Commission, 12 percent of the 431,000 fraud cases last year were from an online auction transaction that went awry. While shopping online through auctions is a good way to find bargains, you should try to make sure you're dealing with a legitimate seller.
Looking at their past transactions record is a good indicator of a seller's reputation. For more information on how to protect yourself from online fraud visit www.dell.com/security or www.ftc.gov Now that you know what steps to take to protect yourself from online fraud let's take a deeper looking into how to protect your PC from viruses and spyware. Your PC is experiencing a significant decrease in performance.
And it's constantly crashing. You see strange dialogue boxes asking suspicious questions. You get constant error messages every time you attempt to open an application. No, this doesn't mean your PC is haunted. But it could be a clear indicator that your PC has been infected by a virus or has spyware.
There's a couple of different things. There's viruses and there's spyware, right? And a lot of people associate the two as being the same. They're really not. Viruses themselves, viruses actually go out to damage your system. Right? They cause damage to system files. They spread through e-mail attachments, through all sorts of different ways. I mean, through instant messaging programs, these writers for viruses are getting extremely smart.
And no antivirus application is going to be one hundred percent. You're never going to be 100 percent protected against viruses or spyware. In order to decrease your PC's risks of being harmed by a virus or bombarded with spyware you should load an antivirus application on your PC.
Recommended software suites including Symantec products and Macafee and Trend Micro costs $10 to over $100 depending on individual elements or complete suites you choose. If you're looking for an antivirus application you want something that offers you real time protection or run in the background as you use your system. There are suites that are out there that can cover a variety of things.
such as spyware, gray ware, malware and adware and viruses. That's what I would recommend, because some of the adware and spyware infection files actually will go out as a tool to drop virus infections on your system. So they kind of work hand in hand. So a full suite that's going to run in the background along with a good firewall is the best way to protect yourself.
Those who find themselves among the unfortunate and are currently infected with a virus, there are simple solutions you can try before throwing in the towel. Well, if you feel you have an infection already and you don't have antivirus protection, there are some free online scanners that are also cleaners that you can use.
You can go to Trend Micro's website you can do a search on that. I would suggest booting to safe mode so anything that might be running will allow you to go to the website or go to Internet. Of course you can always call in Dell as we work directly with these vendors on a daily basis to make sure that the products are as up to date as possible.
But if you feel you have an infection, either call in to Dell, talk to an agent, or go out to Trend Micro's website, look at their House Call scanner. If you go to dell.com/security, there are some links for Web root Symantec and Trend Micro where you can go in. Trend Micro is the only one that has a scanner and cleaner. Once you invest in an antivirus application it's essential to maintain the software through scheduled updates.
Failing to sustain the application can leave the PC exposed to potential harm. On the task bar by your time there's usually an icon, whether it's Macafee, Symantec, or Trend Micro what have you, double click on that icon, it will open up the menu or screen for that application.
I would make sure and check that your scheduled updates is scheduled. If you leave your system on all the time, identify a time that you're not on your system for it to go out and update at least once a week. Unfortunately, many users will neglect their systems and decide not to install an antivirus program for various reasons.
However, they should realize in disregarding their computer's security now there's a huge possibility they will end up regretting it later. You can look at it this way.
Either take the chance on spending an extra five minutes of your time to install something like this on your system and rely on it, or not do it at all.
What are the chances you're going to be -- I would say you probably have about a 95 percent chance that you're going to be calling
someone and spending more money than it would have cost you for that application and cleaning your system. As we saw, words of the wise: Take action now before you regret it later.
Antivirus software is fairly inexpensive and having the comfort and protection is well worth it. Until next time.
