Many of these programs are geared not so much towards your child’s safety but to make our computers free of Viruses and malware.  Trojans, worms, viruses they are called can infect your laptop or system and make them impaired or even unusable.

We will list some of the programs available that are designed to prevent infection of your Windows XP system.

Some on the list but not limited to are:

• McAffee Anti-Virus
• Norton Anti-Virus
• TrendMicro Anti-Virus
• Kaspersky Anti-Virus

There are also many programs besides these aforementioned that are solely aimed at cleaning and quarantining Viruses, Trojans, and Malware.  These are usually called Malware Removal Tools.  These products will go (once installed) and check every file and registry entry on your Windows XP machine and either remove or quarantine the offending worm, Trojan, or malware.  They usually will show you once the scan is completed the list of files that are considered dangerous.  A common list of Mal-ware  Removal Tools is following.

• MalwareBytes Anti-Malware
• Ad-Aware Free Anti-Malware
• IOBit Security 360
• Sbybot Search and Destroy
• Trend Micro Hijack This

Clearly there are many choices and at many different price points.  Some cable Internet providers such as comcast provide Antivirus for free with their Internet service so be sure to ask.

Good luck and keep it clean.

~PCA