Free Virus Scan; Free Spyware Scanners; Security tools

Panda Software offers a good online scanner for your computer. They claim to provide hassle-free protection against viruses, spyware, hackers, spam and other internet threats.

McAfee Stinger is a very nice small program that can be downloaded and run. It doesn't have all the features of major virus scanning programs but it's always updated to protect against the top virus threats.

AVG Virus protection software is a really nice product. AVG is kind enough to provide a free version as well as their paid version. For the free version, please respect their license requirements.

Zonelabs provides a great free and commercial version of their firewall softare called Zonealarm. We highly recommend that you try the free version which will be perfect for most users and upgrade to any of their commercial software if the need arises.

Spybot and Ad-Aware are "good" products for getting some additional protection against spyware. However, for our money, the commercial software Spysweeper from Webroot is a strong recommendation.

No recommendation would be fair without suggesting that you use a good browser that is known for security. We recommend Firefox for just that reason.