A Virtual Private Network, or a VPN, can be a very useful tool when you are browsing the internet. Due to heightened awareness about the need to keep personal information and data safe online, their popularity has increased exponentially in the past few years. Through the use of a VPN, your internet activity is encrypted, protecting it from hijackers or snoopers. Aside from data security, there is a wide range of reasons why people use VPNs – it may be to securely access internal intranets for work or school, to be able to watch television shows when you are abroad or to avoid internet censorship. Whatever your reason for using one, you may find that there are a huge number of different VPN providers and it can be difficult to decide which one is right for you.

Reliability & Speed

One of the key aspects of a VPN that you should consider is how reliable the service is. You don’t want to end up with a VPN service that cuts out constantly or is down most of the time because you didn’t do your research. Make sure to read reviews, especially reviews from trusted technology blogs or websites, as this can give you a good idea of how good a service is.

You should also think about how important the speed of your VPN connection is. Although the speed of a VPN service is related to the speed of your internet provided by your ISP, it can also be influenced by other factors. The connection speed can be affected by the server location of the VPN service, the closer your proximity to the server – the faster your connection.

Your Internet Security

Apart from playing the friendly role of protecting your computer from all types of viruses and malware, sometimes internet security software plays another role, and that is of slowing down your computer. So what to do at those moments? How to speed up internet security software?

Do you need to pay to the professionals out there to fuel its speed? Well, all I would say is ‘RELAX’. There are some easy but effective DIY steps by which you can increase its speed, without spending a single cent on the professionals!

What is the Bloodhound Exploit 196? If you search McAfee, you will see that it is not even one of the top tracked viruses by them, but on the Internet, you will notice that a lot of users are getting frustrated by the 196. It is a persistent virus that is able to survive the deletion by antivirus software. You can still easily remove it like any other computer viruses but you just have to delete all traces of it at one go. The survivor tactics by the Bloodhound.Exploit.196 is neither new nor innovative, it has been used by many other viruses but it continues to fool computer users to this day.

The Bloodhound.Exploit.196 is a heuristic detection for files attempting to exploit the Adobe Acrobat and Reader Multiple Arbitrary Code Execution and Security Vulnerabilities (BID 27641) or the Adobe Acrobat and Reader Collab ‘getIcon()’ JavaScript Method Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (BID 34169). This information is from Symantec if you would like to read more.

Using a computer nowadays exposes you to a lot of possible hazards and risks from the online world. There are a lot of different Trojans, viruses, malwares that are created daily, with the intention to either create chaos in your computer, take over your computer or steal information from you. We could either deal with it by switching off our computer system, cutting all connections to the Internet or we could just manage the risks by adopting some safe practices that can protect us and help us to avoid the threats in the first place.

Of course, turning off our computer or cutting off our connection is unthinkable for many of us. We live and breathe off our computer and need it for our work, entertainment and just simply for the sake of it. Although that would have been the easier approach towards eliminating risk from the online world, the downside of not being able to surf the web, download stuffs and even using facebook is not actually what we dream off when we first thought of the potential risks from the Internet.

To enjoy a less risky environment when we connect to the Internet, there are some simple guidelines that we should stick to. First of all, we should always ensure that we have antivirus firewall software installed on our computers. This is the most basic step that anyone should take, even if you really like to throw caution to the wind, I would still say that you should install an antivirus firewall software so that you would not have to deal with the hassle of reinstalling your entire system when it crashes due to a Trojan that you accidentally brought home during one of your trips to the latest torrent sites. At the very least, an antivirus protection will reduce the pain when your system is infected by viruses or malware.