Twelve common sense windows securing tips

1. Make sure you upgrade to Service Pack 2 (Click here)
2. Schedule Windows Update to run at least once a week (Click here)
3. Download the Microsoft Antispyware which is in its beta version at the time of this writing, schedule it for spyware signatures updates as well as daily scanning of your computer (Click here)
4. Avoid installing and running suspicious trial programs and other programs claiming to protect your computer that you encounter on the internet.
5. If you have a broadband internet connection, make sure you are behind a firewall or otherwise, switch off your computer when you are not using it.
6. Never download attachments from suspicious emails.
7. Use a "webmail" instead of anything like Microsoft Outlook if you have the option.
8. Don't let your friends, children or anybody else for that matter open a file on your computer from a floppy disk or CD-Rom which origins you know nothing about. Even if you do let them because it is important for them to access, make sure you run a complete virus as well as antispyware, trojan horses scan as soon as they are done.
9. Always make sure you lock your computer everytime you are not close to it (even if you going to the bathroom for only 10 mns). Security experts have determined that physical access to a computer is the deadliest.
10. There are a few available programs that you can run to scan your port and find out what ports on your computer are open, why they're open and what kind of information are being sent out through them. Get such an application and run it about 2 to 3 times in a week.
11. Check out suspicious startup tasks / programs by going to "Start Menu -> run -> type "msconfig" -> then click on the "startup" tab. Use google to lookup what suspicious taks or startup-items do and whether you really need to enable them.
12. That's it!