These products are free - with no unpleasant surprises. As with the products in the Recommended Software section, these free programs have had extensive third party reviews and subject to our own intensive internal assessment. The programs are recommended here because we use them on our machines and because they simply are good. This section is updated continually and we welcome your suggestions for programs that should be in this section. Please send along your suggestions: contact_us@flyinghamster.com.

Catherine Forsythe

Locknote

Consider Steganos LockNote as ‘preventative medicine’. If there is sensitive information on your machine, protect it. LockNote is an excellent line of defense - security and privacy with an easy to use tool.

“Hide your serial numbers, passwords, phone numbers and everyday notes in a safe place. Your informations will be encrypted using a password and most modern AES 256bit encryption technology.”

• for Windows 2000, XP or later
• freeware
• download for free

Spybot

Spybot provides a line of defence against spyware. It is available in numerous languages. New definitions are added regularly - and the downloaded program must be upgraded regularly to be most effective.

“Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn’t intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don’t see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies.”

• for Windows
• download for free