First things first

Have you been able to avoid Web sites putting little bits of programming in your computer without your knowledge ... eventually making it seem as if your computer has a mind of it's own? If you have, consider yourself lucky!

So, what can you do to protect yourself? The first thing to do, is download, install and run Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. These will attempt to remove as many of these bad programs as possible. The first time you run them, you may be surprised at the number of bad things it'll find! You should probably run these every day, until you remove as much as you can.

Then, you'll want to download, install, and run SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard.

With all four of these programs, make sure you check for the latest updates each time you run them.

Once you've cleaned your computer as best you can, now you can start using Firefox for another layer of protection. If you're lucky, the number of bad programs and files on your computer will have been reduced, if not totally eliminated. If you can't seem to get rid of them, you may have a serious infestation ... and may need to reinstall Windows in order to erase all traces of the bad programs.