Firstly what is the difference between anti-spam and anti-virus software, to understand that you need to know what the difference is between spam and a virus.

Spam first

Spam consists mainly of email delivered to you at your email address that was neither requested or solicited and is often and mostly on topics you have absolutely no interest in. It is a cold calling marketing technique for the Internet and many unscrupulous businesses will scour the Internet looking for email addresses wherever they can find them, firing out an automatic email which can end up in your inbox in the vain hope that they will gain your interest.

Another form of spam is the chain mail emails you get that encourage you to send out multiple emails to your friends on the basis you might get bad luck if you don't forward then, receive some sort of reward or when you have been duped into thinking you are doing your friends a favour.

The worst kind of spam in my opinion is the malicious kind where people are actually trying to defraud you in some way, Nigeria is famous for being a source of the too good to be true financial offer which is typical of this type of email scam and often comes with the name Mr David as the source.

There are other forms of spam but these are the main core of what most people consider to be spam. So now consider whether the spammers of the world are winning the battle, when you find that statistically more than 50% of email traffic fits into the spam category and is forecast to take an even bigger percentage then you could not be blamed for believing that they are.

This leads me to believe that both as organisations and individuals we need to take steps to protect ourselves from the unsolicited garbage that arrives in our in boxes, exactly how we can do that I will be discussing after an explanation of what viruses are.

Viruses

So what is a computer virus exactly, the items that come under the general heading of a virus fall into 3 main categories:

• An actual virus
• A Trojan
• Computer Worms

Viruses are software programs that are sent to your PC with the sole intention of damaging either your PC or the network you are operating on. They are purely malicious and often it is difficult to fathom what inspires the people who put out such programs or to understand their motivation, from what I can see of things they really do not benefit by their actions in any way, they are just out to destroy and disrupt the activities of other users of the Internet.

A computer trojan on the other hand is one form of program that may benefit them when they manage to install it on your PC. On the face of it a Trojan provides what seems to be a beneficial service to you but behind the scenes it is accessing unauthorised parts of your system and recording information that could be used by a hacker to gain access to personal information such as bank account details and passwords as examples.

Computer worms are another form of malicious software and what a worm does is quite simply to reproduce itself by sending copies of itself to other computers on the same network. They effectively clog up the system you are using by consuming large quantities of bandwidth that should be available for genuine communication.

Whichever form of virus you encounter, you can be sure that they are undesirable and unwanted on your PC or network, they are in one way or another going to cause you problems.

Something else worth noting is that often banks will not guarantee your account if you are accessing their system with a PC that is not properly protected with some sort of recognized anti-virus software i.e. if someone accesses your account and transfers all your money and more out of the account, if you do not have suitable protective software in place the bank will deem you liable for your own loss. Something you should check in your terms and conditions, especially if you are involved in on line banking.

So having now found out about the horror of malicious software I am sure that you would like to know how you can avoid falling foul of the people that perpetuate these programs and are intent on causing your PC or network harm by installing a suitable anti virus security software .

There is free anti-spam software available if you want it and some of it is reported to be very good and very reliable. Personally I have never tried any of the free versions other than when I was given it as part of my university studies which was a little while ago now so I don't think it would be fair to include it an anti spam software review.

What I am going to do however is discuss the anti-virus software programs I have used recently:

• McAfee Viruscan Plus 2009
• Norton AntiVirus 2009

McAfee Viruscan Plus - until this year this has been my preferred anti-virus software choice and it came as standard with:

• Anti-virus
  
• Anti-spyware
• Firewall protection
• Web Safety Ratings

My perspective of this software is that it is relatively unobtrusive, all software programs that protect your computer as a matter of course have to download new versions on a regular basis and this as you will find if you have never used one is pretty much a daily basis. This normally happens as soon as you switch your PC on in the morning. I found with McAfee that until it had finished downloading and updating that my PC would run very slowly and I was almost better finding something else to do until it was done. This also applied to a lesser extent with respect to the weekly scan that I carried out that checked out the whole installed system.

There are scheduling options for the weekly scan to a time when you are not using your PC, e.g. at night, and you can switch off automatic updates for your daily updates, but that I feel would be unwise.

That aside I found the software to be really effective and whether I have been lucky or simply unaware, I have never had any malicious software make it past McAfee over the quite considerable time I have used it. I also really like the site checker option that you could use to look at a site for potential threats to your PC safety which gave you a report on whether a site had been involved in any malpractices.

So why did I change, well when it came to renewal I asked them what discounts were available as I had been able to get the software for 1/2 the price the previous year compared to the renewal cost, at that point they offered me an additional 10% discount which was no where close to the previous year.

Consequently I started looking for alternatives, ironically when my renewal was actually due within a day or two the offer was suddenly improved to 1/2 price again much the same as the previous year, unfortunately they were too late.

So would I buy McAfee again, answer yes at the right price and if they were competitive, had they made me their final offer sooner I would have probably still been with them.

Norton Anti-Virus 2009 - this is the software I currently operate with on my PC and it comes with:

• Antivirus
• Antispyware
• Advanced Protection

This is effectively the equivalent product to the McAfee Viruscan Plus, providing the same level of protection. In contrast to McAfee I hardly notice that it is running, even when it is downloading there is no significant difference in the performance of my PC and it uses smart software to register periods of inactivity and carries out scans which it evokes automatically when my PC is on but does not appear to be being used, that's a nice feature.

I have been running Norton Antivirus for about 4 months now and as with McAfee I have not had any malicious software get past the defenses, although I have had reports of attempts.

I miss the site checker facility but with respect to obtrusiveness I would put Norton easily ahead of McAfee. With respect to price and in order to get a similar deal to my previous one with McAfee I had to commit to 2 years, but I did get a PC health check thrown in and to date I do not regret my decision to change.

On balance for the way I use my PC, Norton takes top place but McAfee is a very close 2nd and for people who use their PC's differently to me i.e. who are not on it all the time McAfee with the added site checker function could well come out on top.

Either program does a great job of what it was designed to do, preventing malicious software gaining access to your PC and network.

To be honest I have never been able to put up with the anti-spam software I have used previously and have either disabled it and more recently not bothered to buy it in the first place. Both McAfee and Norton offer anti-spam products and based on their anti-virus software I am sure they would be reliable products.

However I find that most of the email servers provide a level of anti-spam protection which for me is adequate to meet my needs. I follow basic rules of not opening email from an unknown source or that have executable files attached unless I was expecting them or really trust the source.

Also spam gets filtered out and put into a folder that you have to check to see if it is really spam or not, so you end up looking at those emails anyway. There is also a function in Outlook which I use that allows me in the junk email function to block messages from a given source. So all in all I feel I have enough options to deal with spam beyond a specialised package, so would not invest in anti-spam software personally.

The choice is of course up to the individual and the level of risk you are prepared to take or administration you are prepared to put up with.

So I am afraid the best anti-spam software for me is no anti-spam software.