text: all are free for a safe surfing experience,\ninstall in SAFE mode with networking ( hit F-8 at boot time ), run them all in SAFE mode\nwith networking as you'll need it for the updates all the programs below will need.\n\n\nANTI VIRAL\n\nAVG (free) http://free.grisoft.com/\n\n\nFIREWALL \n\nZoneAlarm http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp\n\nWEB BROWSER - http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox\n\nEMAIL  use thunderbird. It has a good built in spam filter and learns when you teach it. http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird\n\nSPYWARE\n\n http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/\n\n http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html \n\n\nand if you have a wireless router follow these tips,\n\n\n1. Use WPA encryption (WPA-PSK) it's less crackable then WEP.\n\n2. Make a passphrase that is upper & lower case and has some numbers thrown in there as well, again harder to crack.\nsome like mAkE1t5eCurE0rel53 and as long as possible.\n\n3. Use MAC access control so only you or authorized PC's can connect (even if you do have encryption turned on)\n\n4. Turn off DHCP use static addresses.\n\n5. Turn off SSID (and change it) unless your card really needs it (some do)\n\n6. Change username/password of access unit front end\n\n7. Ensure you have the usual firewall enabled on your PC.\n\n8. Paranoia rules, turn WLAN off if your not using it :)\n\n\none last tip\ncontrol panel---administrator tools--services--messenger\n\nright clik on it\nstop the service\nthen disable it\nsave changes