Five Free Tools To Keep Your PC (and your financial data) Safe

One of the major issues with doing personal finance is that all of your personal information is stored on your pc and is constantly whizzing around the internet as you access and change information in your bank accounts, brokerage accounts, etc. These five steps are a great basic checklist for security of your financial information and this includes some freebies for those who are as budget conscious as I am.

SSL

This stands for Secure Socket Layer and this is a standard of encryption that effectively garbles your information in order to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible for it to be read by a hacker or someone trying to steal it over the internet. Making sure you are on a secure site is generally as simple as looking at the address in your address bar; an address that starts with https:// instead of http:// is a secure site and has this SSL encryption built in.

Anti-Virus

Anti-Virus is the mainstay of computer security. Computer viruses are programs designed to compromise the data, security, and sometimes even damage or destroy a computer. In order to prevent these from happening, having a good anti-virus solution that is kept up-to-date is essential. This solution should be enabled to access files as they are used and then should scan the entire computer on a weekly basis. This will ensure that there are no additional files that are copied over that are damaging the computer.

Anti-SpyWare/Anti-AdWare

Spyware and Adware often get lumped together. And although there are many suite solutions for these problems, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make sure that both issues are addressed. Furthermore, configuring and updating the solutions is the key here as well; this is no different than an anti-virus. Spyware is designed to capture, gather, and transfer information about your computing and internet usage habits to another third-party pc. Adware is software that is desgined to display ads as you use your computer in the hopes that you will click one of the annoying popups and buy something.

Firewall

Whenever you are connected to the internet and requesting information, you have an address. Your internet address is how the server that you are talking to knows how to send you the information you asked for. However, there are circumstances when information can be requested of you without you asking first. Simply by taking the request and processing it, a hacker can learn that your computer “exists”. This is bad becuase it can cause a problem later on since over time a hacker can figure out what kind of system you are running and how it might be possible to hack your computer. A firewall prevents unauthorized requests from getting to your computer. It makes sure that only people that you’ve started talking to can talk to you.

Conclusion

In the end, the following are good solutions to the issues mentioned above. And by getting these tools now and keeping them updated, you might prevent problems for yourself going forward and save yourself hours and hundreds of dollars worth of headache.

Microsoft Windows Firewall (included in winXP)
Microsoft Anti-Spyware (the top-rated paid AntiSpyware software, now with AntiVirus is Spy Sweeper)
Mcafee Suite
Symantec Suite
Ad Aware SE (by lavasoft)*
Spyware Search and Destroy*
AVG Anti-Virus*

*denotes a free personal version available

Disclaimer: Neither Jed Pittman nor HelpYourMoney.Com specifically endorse these products. Download, install, and use these products at your own risk.