Nowadays, the internet has become a battleground.  Your right to privacy on the internet and well-being for your computer are being attacked constantly, and there is no sign of it letting up anywhere in the near future.  We as an internet provider cannot block out most of this annoying and damaging content, for it would inhibit  most of the legitimate and useful parts of the internet.  What we can offer you though is the knowledge you need in order to keep your computer safe from such attacks and invasions of privacy.

First off, a little notice.  We do not absolutely guarantee any of this information to fix any problems you may have.  There are some types of hijacks and malicious software that may have to be manually removed and repaired by professionals because it is designed to protect itself from the software in this article.  If your computer is already in this state, it is amazing you were able to reach this information. Now then, with that said, let's continue.

We here at Straits Area Internet recommend several tools to clean out your computer.  Some of this software also has more features to help block this malicious content from damaging your computer in the first place.  These advanced features, however, can be confusing, so we leave them turned off.  And some of this type of software doesn't allow you to use the advanced features unless you pay for it.  Most of it is free though.

Here is a list of the software we use and is highly recommended:

	Avast Antivirus
	Our most recommended antivirus solution for PCs of all ages.  This lightweight, yet very powerful antivirus has minimal impact on your systems performance compared to most other antivirus products.  Under our observation, it also has a higher detection rate for viruses than most other antiviruses.  But the best reason to get this antivirus versus another is, it's FREE for home users.

Spybot: Search & Destroy

Spybot has been around, fighting against malware for a long time.  It has a large database of malicious software signatures to check against, and is also used as an aid to help from getting infected in the first place with a browser immunizer, as well as a real time protection tool called TeaTimer.  This little sub-program prompts you to allow for certain actions to take place when installing software, or making system changes, that would otherwise execute secretively without you knowing.

	Windows Defender (XP)
	This is a real time / deep scanning anti-spyware program from Microsoft and made for you to use for free.  Along with Avast Antivirus & Spybot, these programs (mostly) help to keep your computer from being infected in the first place.

	Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
	This is a powerful cleaning tool that is free to use, manually. This means you have to scan for and clean out infections on your own. They do also have a way to buy this program so it can help to keep your computer protected in the background

	CA Yahoo Anti-Spy
	Another spyware/adware cleaning tool made freely available to you, courtesy of Yahoo!

"OK, now that I have all of these programs and installed, what do I do with them?"

Well...that's where some reading is required.  Each program has full documentation, either on file, or they can be printed.  It contains all the information necessary for you to know how to operate the program, and what all the terms and jargon means, relative to that program and the stuff that it cleans and protects against.  But if that's too much to do, remember these steps and find your way through the programs.  Update, Scan, Select All, Repair/Remove/Delete.  Almost everything these programs identify is junk and is safe to remove.  Just in case, if it breaks something that you use, some of them make backups of the stuff it had removed so that you may restore it, and tell it to ignore it the next time around.  We recommend running these programs once in a while to ensure that your system remains clean and that nothing has made it past these programs' real-time protection.