If you’re a Windows user you need an Anti-Virus. I do not recommend the current top sellers: Norton Anti-virus or McAfee. They’re bloated and less effective than others. Check any anti-virus before you buy by visiting the independent Virus Bulletin. Any anti-virus you choose should also be certified by the ICSA Labs (all the big commercial products are).

• If you can’t afford, or don’t want to buy, an anti-virus program I recommend the Free Version of AVG from Grisoft. It’s fairly accurate but to reduce bloat you might want to turn off the background tasks.
• The best commercial anti-virus is NOD32 from Eset. It’s relatively inexpensive and has a 100% effective rating from the Virus Bulletin. [Disclaimer: ESET is a sponsor of the radio show, but I use it myself and would sincerely recommend it even if they weren’t.]

Symantec’s Anti-Virus Research Center is a good source of virus information. The site also lists hoaxes and offers many free virus removal tools. Most anti-virus companies maintain similar sites. Unfortunately, there’s no standard for virus names, so you may have to look around to find the right page.

If you are having problems installing an AV product it may be that your system is infected. Use one of these free online anti-virus scans to check for infection:

• F-Secure
• Trend Micro’s Housecall
• Panda’s ActiveScan

Currently these online scanners require Internet Explorer, but a cross-platform version of Housecall is reportedly under development.