You might call me cheap, stingy, thrifty, a tight-wad or a penny-pincher but I do most of my shopping online and I hate paying full price for anything. Comparing 10 different stores online is far easier than driving to 10 different stores nearby; which is what causes online prices to be lower than in-store prices. Whenever I’m looking for something that I want to buy, I will usually check the prices at a minimum of 5 different websites prior to actually making the purchase. I usually (a) always find a cheaper price than what is available to me locally and (b) receive free shipping on my goods. When you add the benefit of not paying sales taxes on most purchases (shakes his fist at New York) – the deals become even better. My problem is that even though I’ve found a cheap price somewhere, I’m getting free shipping and I’m not paying sales tax on the item – I still feel the need to receive some sort of deal. Most times I don’t care if it’s $5 off or a 30% discount – I just don’t want to pay what everyone else could buy it at. Finding the codes that get you a discount is often the most time consuming effort in the purchasing process, so I’m going to show you how I get it done.

Searching for additional savings

By the time that you read this article the product, prices and discounts may be different.

If you’re looking for a specific product – I suggest that you start at the manufacturer’s website. Visit the main website for the item that you want to buy and gather some detailed information. If it’s software you want, grab the latest version number – If it’s a leaf blower, grab the model number that you’re interested in. This will help you be more specific during your searches and you might even find a different discount when you use the model number rather than the product name. Normally, I will never buy anything directly from the manufacturer – but it’s a great place to start your research.

In this example we’re going to buy from my favorite print shop – OvernightPrints.com. Let’s say we need to buy 1,000 double sided business cards, which would cost us $49.95. In this example, we’ve already snooped around and it turns out that $49.95 is the best price available. So now that we know what we’re buying and who we’re going to buy it from – we will look for some type of discount from that store, preferably for that product.

Since I love Google, we’re going to start there. Do a quick search for discounts by using the company, the product and the words “discount code.” If you don’t like discount code, you can search for discounts, promos, coupons, deals and so on. Most of the time, my favorite discount website, RetailMeNot.com will show up in the rankings. Go to any of the sites that are listed and check out their special offers or promotional codes that you can enter when finalizing the checkout process. For this example Retail Me Not has a lot of codes for Overnight Prints, we just have to figure out which code will get us better savings. With the current listed codes for business cards from Overnight Prints, it appears that we could save 10% or $10. Since we’re talking about $49.95 we would opt for the $10 discount since 10% would only be $4.99.

Companies also offer special promotions from time to time – you may want to email them or sign up for their newsletter to find out when things will be on sale. While we’re on the subject – sign up for my newsletter to have my updates and articles delivered directly to your inbox.

A quick touch on Security

Most people that I speak with are too scared to get that big online deal because they think that their credit card will get stolen. Identity theft does happen but shying away from the internet isn’t going to protect you from it.

If you’re worried about your online dealings, I suggest that you sign up with PayPal and download their plugin. PayPal’s plugin allows you to generate a MasterCard number that can be used once or multiple times. Just imagine an endless supply of disposable credit cards! Even if your single-use credit card number was compromised during an online purchase, the criminals wouldn’t be able to charge it again.

I also recommend that you use a program called, “Roboform” to assist you with storing your personal information such as names/logins, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, credit cards, and banking numbers. Whenever you need to fill a form on any website, Roboform will automatically fill in all of the information with a simple mouse click. This not only helps you remember all of your important logins and such, but it protects you from hidden programs on your computer that record and send out logs of everything that you’ve typed on your keyboard.

Final Ramblings

If the advice above isn’t working or you’re planning on making a big online purchase and want to make sure that you’re getting the best deal – feel free to contact me and I’ll try my hardest to find some savings for you.

In the past I have tried out a lot of anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewalls and other applications. I purchased a two-year subscription for all three of my computers back in October of 2007. This set me back $86.95 which was relatively inexpensive, considering that I was protecting all of my computers for less than $4 a month. I do spend a lot of time on the internet and I download a large quantity of files from questionable sources. =] This is why I choose to give myself a little bit of protection.

Most of the other brands that I’ve tried were either (a) too annoying to setup/implement, or (b) weren’t catching malicious content that AVG was finding. I started off using AVG’s free anti-virus and anti-spyware software, which only has 33% of the functionality included in their Internet Security suite. I used to download one file onto my laptop while it was “protected” by some other anti-virus software and I would eventually transfer that file to my desktop which was running the free version of AVG. I soon found out that AVG was much better than most others when it was catching malicious files that the other applications were letting slip by. AVG’s Internet Security 8 has received the VB100 award by detecting a wide variety of viruses in its default state during on-demand and on-access scanning without any false positives. AVG has since earned my trust and I haven’t experienced any problems finding those naughty files since using their software. The following paragraphs contain my review of AVG Internet Security as well as some basic information about viruses and what not.

Getting Started

You will most likely be interested in trying AVG’s Internet Security free of charge. This trial doesn’t pull any punches; it is fully functional for 30 days. You will have access to technical support as well as all of the suites features, just as if you had paid for it. The download is 56.3 megabytes and you won’t need to give up any personal information. Once downloaded, just run the simple install and it will help you through each step. Once installed the interface is also very easy to operate.
Keep in mind that some specifics may have changed since I wrote this article.

How It All Works

AVG’s Internet Security brings together every type of security product that you’ll need to protect your computer. This software suite protects it’s users from viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, identity theft, phishing, fraud, spam, hackers, threatening websites, dangerous instant messages, as well as other hidden threats and malicious content. Malicious software is able to copy, corrupt and even erase the data on your computer.
One of the newest features is the ability to scan a website’s address prior to you actually going to the website. This way, if the website you were going to visit is a known threat – AVG will warn you before you go any further and possibly get infected.

Why do I need all this?

Anti-Virus

One of the foundations to your computer’s protection is the Anti-Virus feature. The number of Viruses out there in the world is expected to reach one million by sometime in 2009. A Virus is an application that can duplicate itself and infect your computer without you even knowing about it.

Worms differ from Viruses because they are able to spread themselves without a user’s actions. The Code Red Worm infected more than 359,000 servers in less than 14 hours. The Sapphire/Slammer SQL Worm took approximately 10 minutes to spread worldwide and infected at least 75,000 victims.

Trojans basically hide inside a file that you would think is harmless. Most of the time it is very hard to detect a Trojan before it is actually executed. If you accidentally run a Trojan, it can practically cause any kind of damage that it wants to your computer.

Around 40% of computer users have been infected by a computer virus.

Anti-Spyware

Spyware can do a variety of nasty tasks. There are programs that can steal your personal information, email address and address books. Some Spyware likes to keep a log of everything that you type (like your passwords) and then it sends those logs to the Spyware creator so they can steal your identity. There are a lot of Anti-Spyware programs that pretend to be security solutions but actually consist of Spyware themselves.

Other malicious software can consistently deliver advertising emails to your inbox, use your computer to broadcast pornography to others, slow down your internet connection and/or crash your computer.

Adware usually keeps track of what you’re browsing on the internet, redirect you to certain websites, and open pop-up windows all of the time. A program using Adware (like some of the toolbars out there) will display advertisements that are related to what the Adware notices you’re viewing while it is spying on you.

Around 91% of high-speed internet users have some form of Spyware on their computers.

Anti-Rootkit

A Rootkit is another type of malicious software that takes control of your computer system. This allows someone else to access your computer while avoiding detection. It manages to do this by hiding files, looking like it is part of the system and concealing the processes that it runs.

Anti-Spam

Approximately 14.5 billion Spam messages are sent out across the globe each day. Spam consists of unwanted messages that are related to advertising, adult-related topics, financial matters, fraud, phishing and other scams. Not only a constant annoyance, Spam also contains links to the above mentioned Viruses and Spyware.

Firewall

Another threat that is lurking around out there is the individual that tries to access your computer and the data contained within. This person could steal your personal information or perform illegal acts from your machine without your knowledge. Imagine getting in some legal trouble because your computer was responsible for launching a Spam attack or hosting child pornography. A firewall will help to prevent any unauthorized application or person from having access to your computer and it also stops applications from spreading to the internet from your computer.

Other Safe Services

AVG Internet Security is always screening for threats, even while you download files or communicate with others on the internet. There are also security exploits and drive-by downloads that are executed by malicious websites; meaning that you can get infected just by visiting a web page. AVG Internet Security makes sure that your search results, websites, and favorites are safe before you open them.

Tech Support

There are Frequently Asked Questions, video tutorials and a lengthy PDF User Manual for you to look at if you have any problems. You can also email AVG’s Technical Support via e-mail but you have to pay to talk to someone on the phone.

Not Just For Home Users

Businesses are not immune to the threats of malicious software. The costs can be horrendous and are usually associated with loss of data and productivity. When you operate a business – it isn’t just your operations and financial data that is at stake, but your customer’s information as well. Usually large companies pay IT professionals to protect them from such vulnerabilities, so it is actually the Small and Medium Businesses that need to worry about protecting themselves. Since all of those big enterprises are so secure, most criminals will often spend their time attacking easy targets like your entrepreneurial quest.

The Cons

AVG Internet Security doesn’t give you much info about infections. All I’ve ever gotten from them is the name of the threat that it caught. On the other hand, it is quite easy to research the infection once you have the name and I’ve never really need to look too far into it – because AVG has always removed the threat.

Some say the AVG Internet Security 8.0 slows down their computers. Some have claimed that a full system scan use up to 70% of their system resources. I personally have experienced any problems with AVG and the speed of my computer. I prefer not to have anything else running when I’m scanning for viruses anyway, so I do my full system scans when I’m asleep or away from the keyboard.

AVG doesn’t search for Rootkits by default, you have to manually search for them. This doesn’t really make any sense to me, but it isn’t hard to perform either. This would probably be the one feature that I would change if given the choice.

I don’t like programs that have partnerships with other services and then try to dupe the user into installing that service along with their program. I always recommend that you perform a custom install whenever possible and do not install any additional toolbars or services that aren’t related to the program being installed. AVG does ask if you want them to set Yahoo as your default search engine (in Internet Explorer) and Yahoo Search will be on their toolbar as well. I didn’t default to Yahoo and I didn’t install the toolbar – you actually don’t need the toolbar to be fully protected.

While we’re on the subject..

For security and usability reasons, I suggest that you never use Internet Explorer. Instead, you can download Firefox or Google Chrome which are both free. I also recommend that you make Google your default search engine because they are extremely accurate with search results.

Final Ramblings

AVG offers a 100% free Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware (doesn’t expire) program. This is good if your 30 day trial of AVG’s Internet Security expires and you choose not to pay to be fully protected. When I wrote this article, AVG’s free software was the most downloaded file over at CNET’s Download.com with 1,649,472 downloads.

AVG is trusted by over 80 million users. You need to be protecting your computer(s) from all of the threats out there. It is also important to realize that installing a good security program is a good first step, but you also need to backup your data. Do not let Internet Security or Data Backup sit on your to-do list, take care of them now!