Despite advances in anti-virus and anti-malware software virus and malware issues are as significant as ever.  What's changed the most is the severity that these infections can damage your system.  In the past even the most infected systems could be cleaned in no more than a few hours work but today we are seeing systems that are just too badly damaged to be properly cleaned.For this reason we are encouraging Windows users take certain steps to help minimize the impact of these infections:

• First and foremost make sure you have a backup solution.  One that KEEPS you updated. There are a variety of solutions and will add some articles to this site to help with that soon.
  
  
• Make sure you have a quality, updated anti-virus/anti-malware system that uses active scanning on your computer.  We have some recommendations but none of the free products will protect you completely.  We have a couple of solutions that we link in our recommendations section here. Understand that we are no longer recommending any of the free anti-virus solutions. If at all possible a commercial product will save you time and money in the long run!

Ransomware is a real threat these days. Security software may only partially protect you from the worst of this but when it doesn't it is in those instances where the malware tries to trick the user into clicking on something or approving something as an authorized addition that will ultimately encrypt your hard drive until you pay a ransom.  The key here is to not be tricked.  While you are casually browsing the web there is just no reason to do what a popup tells you to.  Close them or your web browser if you have to but BE CAREFUL.