To paraphrase Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man “Viruses, Popups and SPAM, Oh My!” While Popups and SPAM can waste time resources and cost corporations big money in productivity, viruses and worms have the potential to destroy critical files and disrupt operations.

Popups are annoying advertisements that pop up whenever you go to a certain web page. Spams are also known as unsolicited commercial email, which basically involve marketing of products and services through mass mailing lists. I guess you already know about viruses and worms.

The easy answer for viruses might be to change to a Linux based system. For most companies, it is simply not practical. For them, there are commercial software packages that can be loaded on each computer to counter these threats. It is also possible to set up a server that will clean viruses coming in and out of the organization.

If you run any version of Microsoft Windows, it is important that you not only use an anti-virus software, you need to scan frequently and upgrade often. Many people have a false sense of security simply because they installed anti-virus software. In order for anti-software to work, it needs to have descriptions or profiles of the latest viruses. Most packages can update themselves automatically.

There are many ways to get copies of anti-virus software for free. Many motherboards include a CD containing anti-virus software. After installing your anti-virus software, reboot and then do an update.

Probably the best free anti-virus software is the free edition of Grisoft's AVG free edition. A copy can be downloaded from here. Grisoft has a commercial version that is available for $33.00. Grisoft recommends that the commercial customers use the commercial version. Grisoft also makes a network and server version.

One of the easiest ways to deal with spam is to switch to the latest version of Mozilla or Thunderbird Mail. Mozilla is an Open Source browser that is enhanced from the original Netscape Browser. Netscape 7.1 is essentially a version of Mozilla. Mozilla has been getting rave reviews for its performance, features and rendering engine. Mozilla also has an integrated SPAM filter and an integrated Popup filter. Mozilla can import e-mail and address books from Outlook Express and Eudora.

Most people are probably not willing to give up their favorite browser to deal with SPAM or Popups. Even so, it is certainly worthwhile to download Mozilla and try it out. Thunderbird is a standalone mail program that is based on Mozilla's e-mail. Thunderbird is currently my favorite mail program on Microsoft Windows. Thunderbird and Mozilla both also run on Linux and there are versions available for the Mac and other Unix boxes.

If you are not convinced to change your e-mail program, you can download a program called. Popfile. Popfile is an Open Source project that will allow to train your e-mail program to recognize and dump your SPAM into buckets. When Popfile is first run, it doesn't recognize any e-mail as SPAM. You educate Popfile by training Popfile to recognize what is SPAM and what isn't. In an amazingly short time, Popfile becomes very accurate at knowing which e-mails are SPAM. Popfile can run on Microsoft Windows or it can run under the Perl language on other operating systems. Popfile can be found here.

If you use Mozilla or Firebird, you already have an integrated popup killer. If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, you do not. There is an Open Source solution called Popup Killer. Popup Killer was a commercial project. The author donated the code to open source.