How antivirus detection actually works
Signatures, reputation, heuristics and sandboxing — what each stage catches, what it misses, and why every scanner occasionally quarantines something harmless.
How to spot a phishing message
Four things to check before you click, why urgency is the tell, and what to do if you already entered your password.
Ransomware, and backups that actually survive it
Why encryption is the fourth step and not the first, why a permanently connected drive is not a backup, and a routine that works for a home machine.
About these guides
These are written by Linda Jones, who also edits the rest of the site. They are deliberately kept free of affiliate links so that they can say “you do not need to buy anything for this” where that is the correct answer — which, for several of the measures described here, it is. Our sourcing rules are in the editorial policy.