Dear Subscriber,

Welcome to the 7th edition of my newsletter.

Well, I missed a week-- last Sunday the hard drive on my laptop died.  The good thing is that I purchased a 2 year accidental damage warranty for the laptop and it has more than paid for itself.  I've had the motherboard replaced twice and now a new hard drive!!  But, I had to spend some money to retrieve my data from the hard drive because I haven't learned my lesson about making back-ups.  You would think I had!  But, I have taken a lot more precautions for safety even before my hard drive crashed.

I spent the week working on my hard drive, on tweaking the Simple Cash Program site, and I'm also just getting started with a new program Diginet.  I am a firm believer in multiple streams of income- in moderation.  You need to have more than one program earning you money, but you can't have too many otherwise you are stretched too thin-- it is a fine line.

In light of my recent hard drive issues, I thought that this week's newsletter would focus on computer safety- keeping you protected from viruses and computer damage. 

Best wishes,
Liz Martinez

What Do You Need to Keep Your Computer Safe?

Computer safety is not only important to protect the investment you've made in your computer but also to protect your identity.  It is no longer just about keeping our computers safe from a virus that might delete data, it is also about keeping our computers safe from a virus that could potentially leak your personal data all over the net.  But, you do need to make back-ups of your data just in case something happens.

Computer safety is very much like internet marketing and home/online businesses-- no one software seems to be able to cover everything.  You need virus scan software, a firewall, and spyware protection.  As far as virus scan, I personally use McAfee because I get it free from my Internet Service Provider.  It is good for firewall and virus scan.  The good thing is that it now includes a back-up software which I am absolutely going to take advantage of. 

You can get away with one program for virus scan, however, I have found that you cannot get away with only one program for spyware protection.  I am not sure about why, but one program can't seem to protect against all the threats, even fully updated.  I use Spybot search and destroy and Adaware- they are both free programs.  The only program that I actually pay for is XoftSpy.  I have found XoftSpy the only program worth paying for because it is the only one I've seen that removes the key logger threats.  Key logger threats are important to be removed because that is how hackers get your usernames and passwords and other personal information.  The key logging software allows them to log all the keys that you've typed when you used your computer that day. 

So, to learn from my experiences---- make sure you backup your data somehow!  You NEED to have virus scan software and you should have multiple types/forms of spyware software, much of which is free.  The only one worth spending your money on is XoftSpy.

Have a prosperous week!