Considering the recent Internet Explorer security vulnerability, there are all too many reasons to make sure your installation of Windows is safe and secure (or otherwise switch to MacOS, Linux, or some other *nix).

If switching to an alternate OS isn’t feasible, here are 5 easy ways to make your Windows installations less virus and spyware-prone.  (If you’re still using Windows XP like me, you can also read my post on 10 cool free tools to make Windows XP look modern.)

Keep in mind that this post is meant for the less security-minded folks amongst us – if you’re a technology expert, this advice may potentially read as me preaching to the choir.  If not, hopefully some of this advice will come in handy.

1.) If you don’t have an antivirus software, use ClamWin.

ClamWin is an open-source antivirus program.  It’s not quite as powerful as the commercial antivirus solutions out there (Symantec Antivirus or McAfee Antivirus), but the fact that it’s free makes it appealing to those of us on a tight budget.

If you can afford to drop a few bucks on a better solution, having more than one antivirus program is actually best, since occasionally some viruses, especially new variants of old viruses, can sometimes slip past detection, and others will actually target and disable specific commercial antivirus programs.

2.) Make sure Windows Automatic Updates are on.

Microsoft has detailed instructions on how to do this.  Setting Windows to “Automatically Download and Apply Updates” can be annoying if you don’t like to have your machine randomly stop and tell you it needs to reboot, but at least setting it to tell you when updates are available for download is advisable.

3.) Use Microsoft Windows Defender (or something equivalent).

Windows Defender is a free tool from Microsoft for Windows XP and Vista that works like AdAware and SpyBot Search and Destroy to prevent your machine from becoming infected with Spyware, Adware or Malware.  Windows Defender tends to be less aggressive than AdAware or SpyBot, which can sometimes intrude on legitimate Windows activity.  However, if you don’t mind their intrusiveness, AdAware and SpyBot are good tools for avoiding and removing spyware.

Windows Defender is installed by default with Windows Vista, but did not originally ship with Windows XP.  If you have Windows XP, you’ll need to download Windows Defender from Microsoft.  Both the Vista and XP versions of Windows Defender needs to pick up regular updates through Microsoft Windows Update.

4.) Switch to Firefox.

Seriously. Just do it today.  If you’re reading this in Internet Explorer, go to getfirefox.com now and download it.  It’s easy to install, you can migrate all of your bookmarks, all of your favorite websites support it, and yes Firefox has the Google Toolbar too.  If you want ultimate security and you don’t mind selectively allowing JavaScript, the NoScript add-on for Firefox will keep you much more secure.

If you don’t like Firefox, go try Google Chrome, or even Apple Safari (yes, it works on Windows).

5.) Back up your system often to more than one external drive.

This piece of advice is probably most often given, and equally as often ignored.  External hard drives are dirt cheap for the protection they provide to your personal data, regardless of whether your machine gets hit by a virus or a catastrophic act of a supreme being.  As a general rule, you should always have two forms of backups.  This can be achieved by either using least two different drives in case one fails, or to also use optical media (DVD or CD-ROM) to back up the really important stuff (like those family photos, or your MP3 collection) and store them somewhere safe in another location (away from any heat or light sources, heh).  It’s also not a bad idea to use something like Flickr or Microsoft SkyDrive as an alternative storage spot.

Filed under: Consumer Web, Security, Windows