I need advise before buying a new computer?

My big conern is security. Sales men will tell me whatever I what to hear. What do I really need to be secure while useing the internet?

I need advise before buying a new computer?bmw

You need a router. This will act as your firewall. You might already have one? As most people know it, its a little box that enables several machines to connect to the internet.

If you use wifi in your home, you will need to use WPA encryption. WEP does not work.

When you browse the internet, firefox is a better option over internet explorer.

And the following anti-malware is recommended (all free)

AdAware

Spybot Search and Destroy

Windows Defender

Antivirus:

Nod32 (costs money)

Blink from eEye (free for US citizens) - a little more complex to manage

Someone will undoubtley post below to use Norton. I would ignore this. It is referred to as bloatware. Slows your system down by up to 50%. That would be OK if it was keeping you secure. It does not. The two pieces of software I have listed above use something called 'heuristics'. This means, if the AV software does not know about a particular virus (ie has not been sent the definition file (ie 'told about it') by the manfacturer) it can make a 'best guess' and figure out that a particular piece of software is doing something it shouldn't be doing. A must have! Most times these days you are already infected before the definition file is released - by which stage its already too late!