Prevent Malware
Spyware, adware, viruses and Trojans invade your privacy, bombard you with pop-up advertising, slow down your computer, and can even steal personal information such as credit card numbers. You can help protect your computer against spyware and other unwanted software with Online Armor.
The Program Guard gives you control over which programs are allowed to run on your computer. Known safe programs, such as MS Office will automatically be allowed to run and dangerous programs will give a red warning popup so you can prevent them from running. When an Unknown program is detected, Online Armor will pop up and ask you whether or not it should run. At this point you have several options - you can block it (and research the program yourself) - or if you are 100% certain, you can allow it to run.
If you choose to allow the program to run, you can optionally "de-fang" it by checking the "RunSafer" box which will cause the program to run with a limited set of rights. RunSafer is like logging onto the computer as a normal user, not as an administrator - which is how most people log on. Running "Safer" means the program cannot do things like install drivers, or make changes to the windows system.
So, assuming we now run our unknown program - what else can Online Armor do to help?
- Malware wants to make sure it automatically starts - Online Armor will tell you if a program tries to make itself (or another program) autorun
- Malware often tries to disable your security programs (Online Armor will not allow this)
- Malware often tries to use the internet (you will be alerted if it tries)
- Malware sometimes tries to tamper with other programs (to get past your security)
- Some malware tries to write entries in your HOSTS file, install spying objects into your browser, or all of the above
Online Armor alerts you to each of these activities (and more) - so if you run a screensaver program that all of a sudden starts to create autoruns, attacks your security and starts to use the internet - you'll know about it and can use Online Armor to block these actions (or, to clean up if you allowed them in error.
