Whole Tips&Tricks

In early September, the Facebook Fan Check virus was spreading like wild. Roughly 325,000 computers were reported of being infected in the first week alone. The people who were infected by the Fan Check Virus had their personal information stolen and the majority are yet unaware that it is still being stolen. The sad thing is that most people won’t notice the new credit cards being opened in their name, the accounts from online retailers like Amazon being used to ship items to foreign places and even direct withdrawals from their bank accounts.

But it all started through a simple, seemingly harmless Facebook application that turned into the Fan Check Virus. So what can you do to protect yourself from viruses that are spread via sites like Facebook and MySpace? There’s four simple things you can do.

Don’t use applications you’re not familiar with. This is a huge problem that allowed the Fan Check Virus to spread as easily as it did, people would have friends that would start using the application and then they would use the application. Don’t use an application just because your friend starts to use it. The same logic goes for e-mail attachments and webpages, as there are a lot of these that will infect your computer with a very nasty virus. Install a decent anti-virus. Free antivirus programs like AVG have a tendency to scan and detect viruses, but sometimes find it hard to remove them. On the other hand, programs like Norton tend to only catch about 90% of viruses, which excludes the newest ones. Do your research and find a excellent antivirus that has been recommended by something like PC magazine. 73% of people infected by the fan check virus, surprisingly enough, didn’t even have an antivirus program installed. Find a excellent antispyware program. Even if your antivirus fails, your antispware program should be able to detect most programs that steal your information and give you at the very least a hint about what’s going on. The sad thing about this is that major antispyware programs like those that Trend Micro puts out are often inadequate for even normal computer use. Those programs fail to adequately secure a computer and lacks features that allow it to backup settings. Make sure you have a excellent registry cleaning program. People nearly always neglect this point, but I can’t illustrate how vital this is. I mention the Facebook Fan Check Virus honestly often with excellent reason, it’s a prime example of what went incorrect with users of social media networks. A study found that amongst the users who were infected by the fan check virus, that 37.5% of them had a excellent, reliable antivirus program and antispyware program but had a registry that was left vulnerable enough for the fan check virus to infect it.

That’s it. If you follow those tips you should be able to prevent ever getting a virus on Facebook or MySpace again, and you should be able to not worrry about identity theft or losing any of your valuable information to hackers.

So shouldn’t you stop hackers from stealing you rinformation? Because the Facebook Fan Check Virus could still be on your computer: check out the Facebook Fan Check Removal page in order to remove the virus that most antivirus programs refuse to acknowledge.