When you’re in the middle of conversations with strangers, you probably don’t randomly shout out your salary figure, passwords for your bank accounts, or your Social Security number. So, if you tend to keep this information private in your conversations with strangers, why would you leave all the information available on your computer for strangers to potentially steal?

Protecting your computer is extremely important these days, especially as it becomes a place to store a lot more private information. There are many ways savvy computer hackers can break into your computer, sometimes without you being aware.

No need to worry though, there are also many ways to help protect your PC. The most radical – and probably not practical – recommendation is to not download anything to your computer. This includes videos, photos, PDF files and documents. Of course, this basically renders your computer useless, so here are some more practical PC protection solutions: