Many ISPs – Internet Service Providers, the people you contract with to get your dial up, DSL, cable, or satellite connection – currently offer some level of virus prevention that may be invisible to you, or may be optional but included software.

This is great but it is usually not enough. For example, many of the free or low cost Web based mail systems like Yahoo! and Hotmail offer pretty good virus protection, so your email and its attachments are scanned. That’s helpful and will eliminate many threats invisibly, but an email client, web-based virus checker can’t do anything to stop viruses from entering your system through web page downloads, which some viruses, particularly so called “Trojan horses” and “worms” will often do.

In most situations you therefore will still want to add your own software like Norton, McAfee or one of the many other commercial packages.

Some ISPs like EarthLink and AOL may in fact offer their own software at no additional charge that will be very similar in functions and features to Norton and McAfee – and may in fact be built using licensed components of one of them. We’re not saying spend money you don’t need to, we’re saying make sure you have a full-function antivirus package on your PC!

No matter which package you might choose, the most important things are:

1. Turn the antivirus software on and leave it on!
2. Turn on the automatic definitions updating feature and leave it on!

It’s like putting on your seatbelt. You might not need it all time, but just get in the habit and sooner or later you’ll be glad you did.