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How to protect your personal cyberspace

The simple task of downloading some music from a file-sharing website proved to be a costly mistake for a young Wrexham man last summer.
Richard, who is single and in his 20s, said: "I'd decided to get some music for my MP3 player for a long train journey I had to make.
"I have to admit, I didn't want to pay for it, so I went through a filesharing site."
It wasn't the first time that he had used the site and things were going fine. Until he began to be bombarded with "pop-ups" – irritating messages that keep appearing on the user's computer screen.
"I was shocked. Nothing like this had ever happened before and I just didn't know what to do, so I just turned my computer off."
Richard called a friend who had some knowledge of computers.
"He advised me to take it to a proper computer shop where they could look at the insides of my computer and work out what was going wrong."
After a visit to the computer department of a large electrical retailer nearby, the problem was diagnosed: a virus had been "bundled" as part of the files that Richard had been downloading from the internet.
"Once the virus got into my hard drive it wreaked complete havoc," says Richard ruefully. "I did have anti-virus software, but it was out of date."
The damage to his computer was so extensive that he was told it was beyond repair. "It was going to cost more to fix than to buy a new computer," he says.
"Getting some cheap music ended up costing me an absolute fortune."
Evening Leader computer expert Jeremy Jones, of Jones The Computer in Wrexham, who regularly gives advice on the latest security issues in his weekly Log On column on Fridays, explained how investing in security measures can be money well spent.
He said: "Many people see the cost of internet security as a further unwanted expense.
"But this is frequently a false economy – with the broadband provider costing about £20 per month, and when you consider the initial cost of the PC or laptop and a potential repair bill of £40 or more, it pays to be safe rather than sorry.

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