Many people ask me what internet security product they should use.

In the past, I have user Avira Antivir.

More recently, I have also been using Windows Defender together with Avira.

However, the differences between antivirus and antispyware become blurred (In my opinion, they should never have been separated… a spyware program should still be seen as a type of virus… and treated as such!).

My old advice to use a combination of security products, just doesn’t work anymore, as antivirus software becomes capable of some antispyware tasks, and vice versa.

Fortunately, the security landscape has changed in the last 6 months (leading up to Sept 2010), and the severity of the infections has increased dramatically.

Products like: Windows Defender, Super Anti Spyware and MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware are still top notch products.

However, recently, Microsoft released: Microsoft Security Essentials (MSSE)

Many people know I’m not a big Microsoft fan, however, I have had several situations “in the field”, where MSSE detected and removed infections that Malwarebytes and SAS could not find.

On top of that, I have also found that MSSE seems to be able to download updates in infected situations that would prevent other security software from getting updates.

And another piece of advice: don’t worry much about firewalls. For 99% of people, the firewall built in to windows is good enough. Particularly when you realise that most broadband modems and routers also have firewall capabilities built in and enabled, then you only really need a good custom firewall if you are running a medium / large business (over 15 PCs), or if you “research” infected sites, and know that you will be infected quite often.

And a final warning: If you EVER find you have been infected, then after removing the infection, you MUST change any passwords related to financially important websites (eg internet banking, ebay, paypal, retirement funds, etc). Ideally, you should change all your passwords.