Everyday there are lots of new people coming onto the internet and discovering the world wide web for the first time. Many of these poeple are teenagers or younger just learning about the world. While it should not take long for them to become aware of the scammers, spammers and phishing thieves there are a few things that can be done to help protect their computers until they do learn.

Firewall

There are three layers of defense you can set up on your computer before you start to surf the web. Your first line of defense is a good firewall program. These monitor the requests for contact and access attempts as the internet routes traffic to your computer. They will detect and automatically block sites that are listed as possible dangers.

Antivirus

An effective, up to date antivirus program is the single most important key to your computer's healthy operation. As well as scanning for and detecting viruses that may have found a way on your machine, they will also remove or quarantine the vast majority of them efficiently. A scanning service that is built into your antivirus program should always be running. This service allows the antivirus program to compare the data coming into your system with a list of known viruses and malware and can usually shut the connection down before it finishes loading. Antivirus programs have quarantine folders to hold those infected files it cannot actually delete.

Spyware

Hand in hand with the antivirus software is the spyware/malware detection software. Not only will this software clean up leftover cookies on your computer, they will search for the many types of trojan horse programs that sit on your system and steal data and information from you. They will perform checks for traces of virus worms that may have spread to other files. Usually a good spyware/malware utility program can fix the problems as well.

Clean the registry

The way a computer keeps up with what it is doing is by keeping a record of all the operations it performs. This will eventually cause your computer to slow down because it is taking longer for it to read through the list to get to where it stored the operation you just commanded. A good registry cleaner will find entries from old deleted or moved files and can remove this useless data from the list.

Newbies to the web generally have a tendency to download stuff like its going out of style and then delete it when they realize its junk. Therefore every newbie should be introduced to the defragmentation program that comes with their operating system. It is just the way computers work that they stash data in the first unused slot they come to and then spread it out from there. Defragmenting your harddrive once a month will also help keep your system from slowing down to a dial-up speed crawl.

These few simple processes and programs are a good way for even first time computer users to take care of their machines. It increases the usefulness and pleasure of the computing experience and prevents huge repair expenses that could easily be avoided. There are always problems that can develop that need the attention of a good computer doctor. Taking care of your system will help him not have to fight through a thousand conflicting trojans to get your machine up and running again.