Spam is any unsolicited advertising material on the Internet. Companies can email ads directly to your email inbox and websites can download advertising programs onto your computer without your knowledge. Some anti-virus programs can find this "ad-ware" on your hard drive and delete it. By placing spam into your junk folder in your email, your email account should now block all incoming mail from that sender's address. If spam gets really severe, you may need to switch email accounts.

Cookies are just small .txt (text) files that by themselves cannot hurt your computer. Cookies are "set" by almost EVERY web-site that you visit, on every visit. You can delete all your cookies today and by tomorrow you will have dozens again just be visiting web-sites. Cookies do NOT slow down a computer, at least the first million or so that you might have on your computer! They are not a virus or spyware, but SOME people consider "tracking" cookies to be an invasion of privacy. These tracking cookies are "3rd party cookies" from advertising servers. They can track your movements around the web in order to deliver to you customized, targeted advertising. It all depends on ones personal level of paranoia, whether one considers tracking cookies some kind of threat. Some anti-spyware programs do not even report tracking cookies as even a minor threat. If these tracking cookies DO bother you AND you are using Internet Explorer for a browser, a simple change of a setting can let you permanently block all 3rd party (tracking) cookies. (Much easier then constantly removing them!) Go to tools > internet options > privacy > advanced > check-mark "override automatic cookie handling" > third party cookies > tick "block" > ok > ok. Children are about the only people that are always nervous about cookies. Because cookies are an easy way for Mommy and Daddy to find out exactly what their darling 'lil ones have been looking at on the web.

There are several actions you should take: 1. Purchase up-to-date Antivirus Software. My current favorite is Norton Antivirus. New Antivirus programs have better technology for scanning email as it comes in, updating themselves easily, and finding virus like activity, even if the virus has not yet been recorded. 2. Keep your Antivirus Software current by downloading Virus Profiles and program updates on a Weekly basis. If you do not keep your Antivirus software up to date, it will quickly become useless. New viruses are released on a daily basis. These updates give you protection against new viruses as they are discovered. With the increasing use of the Internet, viruses spread much more quickly. It is not uncommon to come across a virus within two weeks of it being discovered. 3. Download and install all security patches for your Operating System. If you are using Windows 98 or newer, Microsoft has an update utility available at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Many viruses will exploit holes in windows, and the common windows email software (Outlook, and Outlook Express). Installing these patches will protect you against many of the known security flaws in Windows. 4. Use common sense when handling incoming email. Do not open any email attachments that you are not expecting. Email attachments ending in: .scr, .bat, .pif, .exe, .com, .js, and .jhtml, are very often viruses. Do not open files with these extensions, unless you are absolutely sure that you know what you are doing.

There are a number of things that can be done to keep your computer running smoothly, and to avoid losing your valuable data: 1. Backup your data as often as you can afford to lose it. Regular data backups are essential to protecting your data from hardware failures. Sometimes, computer hardware will fail without notice. If you do not have a backup, you could lose everything. 2. Run a thorough scandisk on your computer monthly. This will notify you if your hard drive is starting to fail. It is much more likely that you data can be saved if you catch a failing hard drive quickly. 3. Defragment your computer monthly. This will help keep your computer running smoothly. 4. Buy a good quality surge suppressor (If you use a modem, get one with telephone line protection). There is a big difference between a power strip and a good surge suppressor. We recommend APC or Belkin surge supressors and uninterruptible power supplies. A good surge suppressor will come with a connected equipment warrantee, which insures that if your computer equipment is damaged by an electrical surge while properly connected to the surge suppressor, they will pay for it up to a specified limit.

1 When your computer was new, it was faster than most of the other computers that you may have used at the time. Now, it is slower than the other computers that are around. The computer seems slower, because your frame of reference is different. 2 As you use your computer, you will often download programs such as realplayer, aol, antivirus software, and other programs that run whenever your computer boots up. These programs usually show up in the system tray by the clock. Each of these programs takes up system resources (memory) while it is running. This will cause your computer to slow down. 3 As your computer is used, the hard disk drive becomes fragmented, which slows down the amount of time it takes to read a file off the hard drive. This affects the speed at which programs load as well. 4 You could have spyware. Spyware is a general classification for software that is designed to track the way you use your computer. Spyware usually just tracks your internet browsing habits, and sends you popup ads based on the sites that you regularly visit. Some spyware is much more insidious, and causes you to receive unsolicited emails (SPAM), or even places pornography on your machine. A competent computer professional can assist you in removing the spyware from your computer, and immunizing your computer so that you are less likely to get spyware again in the future.

Files can be lost from your computer in any number of ways—you might accidentally delete a file, or a virus might wipe one out. You can also have a complete hard drive failure. When a hard drive dies an untimely death, it's kind of like having your house burn down. Important personal items are usually gone forever—family photos, significant documents, downloaded music, and more. Thankfully it's a really simple process these days to back up your content to a second, separate location. By doing so, your files can be protected against viruses or complete computer failure. This makes it easy to retrieve and place them on a new hard drive and get going again. Today, there are many options for backing up your content. You don't need any sophisticated equipment—you can use CDs, DVDs, external hard drives, flash drives, or network drives. It might be a good idea to back up your data to multiple places. For example, you might choose to back up your content onto both an external hard drive.