In the latest newsletter Ray complains, not for the first time, about Internet security in general. I have the following combination of free or free-for-personal-use applications that give me a completely trouble-free life, in this area at least! All can easily be googled.

Kerio Personal Firewall (Advanced config) - Automatic updates

Avast! Anti-virus - Automatic updates. Incidentally Avast! is old naval English for Stop and Desist! As the author is Czech this raises interesting questions! It has never caused a conflict with other software or installation programs.

Spybot Search & Destroy - Manually update, immunise and check weekly

SpywareGuard - Manually update weekly

SpamExperts - Automatic updates. This is by far the best anti-spam tool that I have tried so far.

Firefox anti-phishing Verification Engine add-in - Semi-automatic updates.

In addition to your excellent list of programs nduncan, could I strongly recommend using Mailwasher to safely view the contents of your e-mails and be able to quickly and easily delete the unwanted ones off your server, BEFORE they are downloaded into your computer.

It can handle a number of different e-mail accounts simultaneously and does not allow for attachments to be opened, as it displays only in plain text … but it does allow you to view and check the headers, if required.

An easy to use program which, in its basic form, is free to use. For a very reasonable amount it can be upgraded to Mailwasher Pro, giving you the option to report Spam and Bogus mails to SpamCop who in turn send a report to the ISPs responsible for allowing them to be sent through their systems. Two excellent programs that have kept my system clean and which are making it more difficult for the spammers ... slowly but surely helping to decrease the amount of rubbish which is being sent.

Cheers

Nev