Article updated on January 5, 2025 by Byothe
If you own a device that can access the internet, be it a smartphone, tablet or laptop, you know that quality antivirus software is not only a good idea, but an absolute necessity. If you do not have antivirus software on the device you are reading this article from, you should immediately learn about antivirus software, install one, and come back to finish this article.
As powerful as antivirus software can be, it is not a silver bullet that will protect you from everything. Hackers, spammers, and cybercriminals don’t give up so easily when they realize you have state-of-the-art computer protection installed on your machine. They are constantly designing, developing, and deploying new methods to bypass your machine’s security in order to infect your system or steal your personal information.
How can you make sure your machine is as protected as possible from malware? Here are five tips to help you in this fight to escape to viruses and enjoy all the benefits of staying connected.
1 – Don’t click on links in your emails without reading them first
Have you ever opened a legitimate-looking email, clicked on a link, only to be taken to a weird website full of pop-up ads and flashing lights? That’s the definition of a fake URL. Hackers are very good at mimicking the appearance of a real email in order to gain your trust. The first thing you can do is hover over the link without clicking on it. This will allow you to see what the URL is. If it’s not a domain you recognize or if it looks weird, don’t click it. You can also go to the website of the company that supposedly sent the email to see if it has the same link or promotion. If it doesn’t, then you know it’s spam.
2 – Use trusted apps, browsers and extensions
If an app isn’t in one of the major app stores, there’s probably a bad reason for it. Most app developers want to be on the Google and Apple app stores because of the massive exposure these platforms guarantee for their product. If they choose to keep their product down, it’s probably because they couldn’t get through the publishing process or never tried.
Likewise, browser extensions are often very useful, but if they appear from sites you don’t remember visiting, that’s a huge red flag. And if an ad pops up in your browser promising unlimited speed without crashes, bugs, or spam, well, we all know when something is too good to be true.
3 – Use a third-party spam filter to avoid malware
Your regular email box catches a lot of threats directed at you, but it won't stop everything. For the whole world, Spam accounts for 48,2% of all emails sent. That's a lot of garbage for the average email client to process. Spam filters are applications that you can install and attach to most email servers. You can adjust their configuration from "light" to "watchdog" and put them to work.
4 – Use an encrypted mail server
Gmail may claim to have better data management, but you still see highly targeted ads when you check your email, right? This leads to a push towards multi-authentication email services such as Protonmail, that lock everything down and keep spam and ads completely out of the equation.
5 – Use a VPN when surfing the net
Un virtual private network (VPN) goes one step further than encrypted email and encrypts everything you do online. The VPN client connects your device to a remote server in another city, region, or country, and creates an encrypted connection between the two. Everything you do online first passes through the remote server, which assigns a different IP address and sends the requests out onto the Internet.
