Google, Yahoo, Bing, Granny in the neighbours house who does not know how to configure her Wi-Fi router are all offering free access to internet but sometimes free comes with a higher cost when paid otherwise. It’s important to know how to surf such open hot-spots safely without losing or exposing your identity online.

Following is the list of softwares and techniques one can use to protect your computer against such pitfalls.

First things first:

• Unshare all the files and folders that are configured to share the content on your home or office network. If you don’t remember the list of files and folders that are shared over the network you can do one of two things,
  • Type  \\<Your Computer Name> to see all the shared files on your computer and remove sharing from all the files and folders
  • Go to Network and Sharing Center in the Control Panel and turn off “Folder Sharing” from under “Sharing and Discovery” section

• Install a personal firewall on the computer to know if anyone is trying to gain unauthorized access to the information on your computer.
  • ZoneAlaram (free) [link]
  • Pc Tools Freewall Plus (free) [link]
  • Ashampoo FireWall Free 1.2 (free) [link]
• Install VPN for secure browsing. VPN encrypts every bit of information that is sent and received from your computer making it a hack-proof method of browsing on open hotspots.
  • Open VPN [link]

Besides the suggestions mentioned above it is also important to make sure you have an updated anti-virus running on your computer and the computer is scanned at least once in 15 days.

I use Kaspersky on my computer and I am pretty happy with it. I’d recommend the same to all our readers. [link]

Hope this helps in securing your information over unsecured Wi-Fi and Hotspots.

I am a big fan of Kaspersky AntiVirus and if you would buy me I’d say there’s no better Internet Security solution for you than Kaspersky. It’s a state of art AntiVirus and is one of the best solutions in the market. Good part is now you can get a 6 month license for free. That means you don’t have to pay single penny to get this wonderful software. Let’s see how you can get Kaspersky AntiVirus 2009 for free.

Make sure you are following these steps using Internet Explorer (I know this sucks, but you have to use IE 5.5 or above)

1. Go to http://www.yuvayantra.com/

2. Register on their site with your email address.

3. They’ll send you the activation link to your mail address.

4. Activate you account (Make sure you are on IE 5.5 or above) by clicking the activation link that you received in your mail box.

5. Once you have activated the link, at the bottom of the page you’ll see an image which reads “Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 Free”.

6. Click on the link and you’ll reach a page like the one below.

7. At the bottom of the page you’ll see a link that says “Get your free license now”. Click it.

8. On the next page you’ll a page with 3 steps. Follow the steps to get the free license.

That’s pretty much! You’ll be able to download and will get a key on the page. Also, the key will be sent to your email address. Have fun with 6 months of free Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009.

Note: If you are smart enough you can use more than one email registration to get multiple keys and hence multiple licenses. Which means that you can use it for more than 6 months!

Just because of too much of competition in the anti-virus market, companies are coming up with a lot of promotional offers and some are extending their trial period and same is the case with Norton 2009 anti-virus. With a little bit of smartness you can get up to 360 days free subscription for Norton Antivirus 2009. Norton has become faster and more relaible over a period of time and we wrote about it sometime back. You can chek the post here.

Norton Anti-Virus for one year will cost you $39.99. There are 3 OEM versions of Norton AntiVirus 2009. 2 for 90 days and one for 180 days. This means that you can install Norton antivirus for 360 days with out having to pay for it. Both the 90 days packages are in English and the 180 days one is in German.

English versions 90 days each.

• http://spftrl2.digitalriver.com/pub/symantec/2004/NAV2009_16.0_Build_0 000001_OEM90_Microsoft.exe
• http://spftrl.digitalriver.com/pub/symantec/2004/PRNAV2009-90ML.exe

180 days German version

• http://spftrl.digitalriver.com/pub/symantec/2004/NAVPCWelt180.exe

I hope you have fun using Norton anti-virus for free and by the time you are finished using it, you’ll have other releases form Norton to try. Because these are OEM versions you won’t need to activate them and hence you are getting them for free with full updates!

1. Go to http://us.mcafee.com/en-us/affiliates/dod/landingpages/ using your browser.

2. Check the box

Today I switched my computer ON just like any other day and the hell broke lose. Computer was running slow, high-speed internet was acting choked and I almost thought my monitor belongs to a 16 year old sexually charged with adult pop-ups all over the screen.

By the time I could figure out what went wrong (virus attack), I had already lost some data on my hard drive and my Operating System was acting weird.

A computer that is inadequately protected is vulnerable to all sorts of viruses, spyware or malicious codes which could attack your data or even your operating system.

Some malware are programmed to damage the computer by damaging programs, deleting files, or reformatting the hard disk. Other malware programs are not designed to do any damage, but simply replicate themselves and perhaps make their presence known by presenting text, video, or audio messages. (Wikipedia)

I gathered information on about 5 most popular free Antivirus softwares which do a good job of protecting your computer and keep your data safe from such attacks.

Why pay for Antivirus softwares when free ones are equally good? Following is the list of top 5 free antivirus softwares.

Avast.com – avast! is a fully featured free antivirus designed specifically for home users or for non-commercial use, however, it requires you to register your free version with Avast within 60 days of installation. It is compatible with Windows Vista/XP/2000/NT/ME/98. The latest version of Avast 4.8 comes with 39 downloadable skins to personalize your free copy of antiviurs software.

Some of the features of avast! Free Antivirus for Home Edition are listed below.

• Anti-spyware built-in
• Web Shield
• Anti-rootkit built-in
• Automatic updates
• Strong self-protection
• Virus Chest
• Antivirus kernel
• System integration
• Simple User Interface
• Integrated Virus Cleaner
• Resident protection
• Support for 64-bit Windows
• P2P and IM Shields
• Internationalization
• Network Shield

Click here to visit the official site and here to download avast!

AVG.com – AVG’s is one of the most popular free Antivirus softwares available online. AVG has a strong userbase of 70 million users and the number just keeps going up! AVG is easy to download, install and use. It is compatible with Windows Vista & Windows XP and freely available for home and non-Commercial use.

AVG keeps it virus database udpated with the latest virus definitions, this helps its users detect the latest virus threats as soon as it hits internet.

Her are some of the key feature of AVG FREE Edition

• Automatic update functionality
• The AVG Resident Shield, which provides real-time protection as files are opened and programs are run
• The AVG E-mail Scanner, which protects your e-mail
• The AVG On-Demand Scanner, which allows the user to perform scheduled and manual tests
• Free Virus Database Updates
• AVG Virus Vault for safe handling of infected files

Click here to download AVG

Avira.com – Avira AntiVir Personal – FREE Antivirus is a another reliable free antivirus solution, that constantly and rapidly scans your computer for malicious programs such as viruses, Trojans, hoaxes, worms, dialers etc. It also monitors every action executed by the user or the operating system and reacts promptly when a malicious program is detected.

“AntiVir is also low-profile. By that I mean it spawns only two background services and if there weren’t a system tray applet to access the program, you probably wouldn’t even know it was running.” – (pcworld.com)

Avira is a Free Antivirus protection for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and also for Linux users. It has over 30 million users worldwide.

Some of the features that Avira AntiVir Personal has are following.

• Protection from viruses, worms and Trojans
• Protection against expensive dialers
• Protection from hidden rootkits
• Faster Scanning up to 20% faster
• Protection from phishing

Click here to download Avira AntiVir Personal.

BitDefender.com – Bitdefender offers its version of free antivirus and it also publicizes that it is “one of the world’s most effective antivirus engines for free!”

Bitdefender’s Free Edition is an on-demand virus scanner, which is best used in a system recovery and is ideal for users who connect to the internet on a regular basis; however it’s not for users who are “always-on” the internet. For these types of users Bitdefender recommends them to upgrade to a more powerful version of their software which is the paid version.

Few features offered by BitDefender are listed below

• Antivirus
• IMPROVED Proactive detection
• Spyware scanning and cleaning
• IMPROVED Deployment and use
• IMPROVED User Experience
• Hourly Updates
• NEW Rootkit Detection and Removal

Bitdefender also comes with other features such as Skinable Interface, where you can customize the looks of the scanner.

Also included in this version is the “Quarantine” and “Report” feature. In Quarantine you can isolate the infected file to reduce the risk of your other files and OS getting infected any further. In the Reporting feature you can check the statistics of your last scan.

Click here to download your free version of Bitdefender..

ClamWin.com – Clamwin offers a free antivirus program for Windows users. Clamwin is an open source project which helps it suers keep their machines from getting infected.

Clamwin has a high detection rate for viruses and spywares however it does not have a real time scanner. Clamwin does not yet automatically scan files. It is currently possible to add this functionality by using Winpooch. You need to manually scan your computer to detect a virus or a spyware.

The latest version of Clamwin Free Antivirus is 0.93.1

Its features are as listed below

• High detection rates for viruses and spyware
• Scanning Scheduler
• Automatic downloads of regularly updated Virus definitions
• Standalone virus scanner and right-click menu integration to Microsoft Windows Explorer
• Addin for Microsoft Outlook to remove virus-infected attachments automatically

Click here to download Clamwin

Do leave a comment or let us know if you know of any other Free Antivirus which you can download and use.