I presently use the following FREE (remember children, free is good) programmes in an effort to protect my PC from the nasties out there in the wild.

Spam Protection

Your ISP may have sever side protection which can be accessed at your settings/preferences page at your ISP's website. Read their FAQ and turn it on if their is one available to you.

Spambayes The Outlook addon (though it works with most POP3 or IMAP compatible clients) is an application of the SpamBayes project. It works with Outlook 2000 onwards in Windows 9x/ME/2K/XP/X64/Vista. It does not work with Outlook Express. With a little effort 'training' this programme, virtually no spam is getting into my inbox after 1 weeks use and you can't say fairer than that.

Spyware protection and removal

Spybot Search & Destroy. It kills spyware & updates itself across the internet or you can manually grab update files if you prefer. It can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes/ start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behavior to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies.

Anti-Virus

AVG Anti-Virus Anti Virus software that can check you HD, Memory, email & downloads for nasties. Free updates across the internet. Top Stuff. Once again, they make finding the free version hard work at their website, I guess they want your money! but the link here has been changed to the current (Aug 06) Free version.

Firewall