Free Computer Protection
The best free computer protection software is often better than the commercial products. For example AVG is highly rated and provides free computer anti-virus protection which usually receives better reviews than Norton or McAfee. Norton and McAfee computer protection software can slow your computer to a crawl with all the unnecessary email, website, file scanning, and background checks that run constantly. AVG free computer virus protection software is better optimized and will not give you large performance hits like most of the more popular utilities do. Another great firewall utility is ZoneAlarm free computer protection software. After Windows XP finally provided a firewall with their second service pack they made a huge mistake and only turned half on it on. It only protected inbound threats and not outbound. If you computer becomes compromised you could loose all your important personal information and never know it left your computer, because Windows does not protect you from any outbound threats. The security community was again very disappointed in Microsoft. However, ZoneAlarm is a highly rated firewall utility that provides some of the best inbound and outbound firewall
ZoneAlarm
protection for free. ZoneAlarm will even tell you if a program or file has changed and then ask you permission to run it. This protects you from viruses modifying common programs that you might run unknowingly with a new virus attached. ZoneAlarm can be a little naggy but it is only trying to protect you. You can tell it not to keep asking the same questions over and over by simple checking a box and telling it not to ask the same question again. ZoneAlarm is a must for computer protection and again the basic version, which provides great protection, is free.