Essential security software for your PC

It doesn't take long for a PC to fill with unwanted programs: depending on who you believe, a brand new PC will be infected with malware within 4, 7 or 8 minutes, before you get it out of the box or before you even get it home.
While some of the threats are massively overhyped, malware and other online problems are extremely irritating and, in many cases, major time thieves. These apps will keep you and your PC happy.

Avast Free antivirus

Avast is one of the most downloaded programs of all time, with good reason: it offers effective anti-virus protection without slowing your PC to a crawl or making you install security modules you're unlikely to ever need.

Avast Free is a firm favourite for its effective protection and zero price tag.

The free version doesn't have all of the security features of its paid-for siblings, which add anti-spam and phishing protection, but it covers the basics brilliantly and can remove unwanted browser add-ons.

Ad-Aware Free

Lavasoft's malware protector Ad-Aware has been on our essentials list for years, and once again the free version offers more than enough security features for everyday PC use. The main attraction here is Ad-Aware's superb anti-spyware protection, which can find malware and adware and banish it forever.

Ad-Aware removes adware and other unwanted programs that can infest your PC.

There's something of an arms race going on between security firms and malware developers, but Ad-Aware's automatic updates should keep your software current and capable of spotting even the most obscure malware. The program can also protect you from fraudulent websites and dodgy downloads, and Game Mode keeps it quiet when you're gaming.

CleanMail Home

If our inbox is anything to go by, approximately 99.9% of all email is spam – and that means 99.9% of our email time is spent getting rid of it. CleanMail has a better idea: if you use POP3 mail it uses the award-winning SpamAssassin anti-spam engine to identify incoming junk mail and get shot of the lot.

Cleanmail can filter out spam before it gets anywhere near your inbox.

It's always learning, analysing junk messages to help it become even better over time. It can whitelist specific senders so the boss's mails never end up in the bin, and it can block entire domains of known spam senders.

Ghostery

You may not realise it, but your surfing habits are probably being tracked by dozens of websites keen to sell you their products. These tracking cookies are not malicious, but you may not want Amazon and friends collecting your data and knowing exactly what you're thinking of buying. If not, try Ghostery – available for Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and more. It's available for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Android and iOS, and its job is to block the various tracking systems that attempt to follow you around the internet to sell you stuff.

Ghostery shows you who's watching you online and enables you to block the trackers.

You can simply install it and let it get on with its job, but looking at each site's Ghostery report is a real eye-opener: some sites have so many different trackers and advertising networks it's a miracle their pages ever load. Ghostery also tells you exactly what each company is looking at and likely to do with your data, so if you'd rather not share every click with marketers, its a must-have.

AdBlock Plus

AdBlock Plus is a controversial one. Publishers of ad-funded websites say it's depriving them of income and putting their sites in danger; fans of AdBlock Plus says that if publishers didn't make ads so invasive and annoying, we wouldn't need to block them. Not only that, but AdBlock Plus automatically blocks sites known to serve malware, so it keeps you both safe and sane.