Whenever antivirus software is mentioned, someone always seems to chime up and say they don’t need an antivirus because they’re “careful”, and “common sense is all you need”. This isn’t true. No matter how smart think you are, you can still benefit from an antivirus on Windows.

The idea that antivirus software is only necessary for irresponsible Windows users is a myth, and a dangerous one to spread. In an age where zero-day vulnerabilities are found and sold to organized crime with alarming frequency, even the most careful of users are vulnerable.

Being Smart Only Helps So Much

Many people think that you can only get malware by downloading suspicious files, running unpatched software, visiting sketchy websites, and doing other irresponsible things like having the Java plug-in enabled in your web browser. But while this is certainly the most common way to pick up malware, it is not the only way malware can spread.

There will always be vulnerabilities that the bad guys find first. Ones we don’t know about, which we can’t protect ourselves from. At events like Pwn2Own and Pwnium, contestants are challenged to compromise fully patched software like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, and more for a financial reward. These browsers and plug-ins inevitably fall as the contestants use unpatched security flaws to crack their security.

These flaws are corrected as soon as they’re found, but new ones inevitably pop up.

In other words, your computer could be infected just from you visiting a website. Even legitimate websites you trust can be compromised—through advertisers or some other vulnarability—and this happens with alarming frequency these days.

Antivirus Is Your Final Layer of Protection

An antivirus is your final layer of protection. If a website uses a security flaw in your browser or a plug-in like Flash to compromise your computer, it will often attempt to install malware—keyloggers, Trojans, rootkits, and all sorts of other bad things. These days, malware is the domain of organized crime looking to gather financial information and harness your computer for botnets.

If a zero-day in a piece of software you use does give the bad guys an opportunity to get malware onto your system, an antivirus is your last layer of defense.  It may not protect you against the zero-day flaw, but it will likely catch and quarantine that malware before it can do any damage. It shouldn’t be your only layer of protection (browsing carefully is still important), but it absolutely needs to be one of your layers of protection. And there’s no good reason not to run an antivirus on Windows.

Why Wouldn’t You Run an Antivirus?

Some people believe that antivirus software is heavy and slows down your computer. This is certainly true for some antivirus programs. Older Norton and McAfee antivirus software suites were infamous for slowing down your computer more than actual viruses would. Even some modern antivirus programs are full of notifications and inducements to keep paying for a subscription and buy more expensive security suites, just as adware annoys you with requests to buy products.

However, things have gotten a lot better. Computers have become so fast that antivirus software doesn’t weigh them down like it used to. Furthermore, the antivirus we recommend on Windows—Microsoft’s built-in Windows Defender—is far lighter on resources, and doesn’t contain any of the extra junkware, ads, or paid upgrades other antivirus suites do. It doesn’t try to sell you anything at all—it just does its job. We also recommend installing Malwarebytes alongside Windows Defender for extra protection when browsing—it’s lightweight and hassle-free just like Defender is.

(Windows Defender is not included on Windows 7—but you can download it as Microsoft Security Essentials.)

Most importantly, since Windows Defender doesn’t need hack-y workarounds to hook itself into your system (since it’s made by Microsoft as part of the system), it’s actually safer than other antivirus programs on the market. Win-win.

As such, there’s no reason not to use Windows Defender—unless you just want to brag online that you’re too smart for an antivirus.

You Should Still Be Careful

An antivirus is only a single layer of security. No antivirus program is perfect, as all the antivirus tests show nothing catches all malware all of the time. if you don’t exercise caution, you may become infected by malware even if you’re using an antivirus (Of course, performing scans with other antivirus programs may help find malware your antivirus suite can’t find.)

Be careful about the files you download and run, keep your software updated, uninstall vulnerable software like Java, and more—but don’t drop your antivirus defenses completely just because you’re being careful. A zero-day in your browser, a plugin like Flash, or Windows itself could open the door to infection, and an antivirus is your last layer of protection.

Malware isn’t what it used to be—much of it is created by organized crime to capture financial information and other sensitive data. Antivirus software helps you stay ahead of the bad guys by a little bit more, and it’s worth using.

The Windows 10 Start Menu is really quite busy with all of those live tiles all over it. If that isn’t your thing, luckily you can remove them all really easily.

Simply right-click on the tiles and choose Unpin from Start.

Once they are all gone, the Start Menu will be nice and slim again.

You can also change the color of the Start Menu by right-clicking on any open space on the menu and choosing Personalize from the context menu.

This will bring up a color selector that allows you to make the change easily.

Pinning Tiles Back to the Start Menu

If you want to put the tiles back, you can simply go to the All Apps view, right-click on the app that has a live tile, and choose to pin to the Start Menu again.

Now if they would just remove that stupid Search button from the taskbar.

Everyone loses data at some point in their lives. Your computer’s hard drive could fail tomorrow, ransomware could hold your files hostage, or a software bug could delete your important files. If you’re not regularly backing up your computer, you could lose those files forever.

Backups don’t have to be hard or confusing, though. You’ve probably heard about countless different backup methods, but which one is right for you? And what files do you really need to back up?

It’s All About Your Personal Data

Let’s start with the obvious: what do you need back up? Well, first and foremost, you need to back up your personal files. You can always reinstall your operating system and redownload your programs if your hard drive fails, but your own personal data is irreplaceable.

Any personal documents, photos, home videos, and any other data on your computer should be backed up regularly. Those can never be replaced. If you’ve spent hours painstakingly ripping audio CDs or video DVDs, you may want to back those files up, too, so you don’t have to do all that work over again.

Your operating system, programs, and other settings can also be backed up. You don’t have to back them up, necessarily, but it can make your life easier if your entire hard drive fails. If you’re the type of person that likes to play around with system files, edit the registry, and regularly update your hardware, having a full system backup may save you time when things go wrong.

The Many Ways to Back Up Your Files

There are many ways to back up your data, from using an external drive to backing up those files on a remote server over the Internet. Here are the strengths and weaknesses of each:

• Back Up to an External Drive: If you have an external USB hard drive, you can just back up to that drive using your computer’s built-in backup features. On Windows 10 and 8, use File History. On Windows 7, use Windows Backup. Occasionally connect the drive to the computer and use the backup tool, or leave it plugged in whenever your home and it’ll back up automatically. Pros: Backing up is cheap and fast. Cons: If your house gets robbed or catches on fire, your backup can be lost along with your computer, which is very bad.

• Back Up Over the Internet: If you want to ensure your files stay safe, you can back them up to the internet with a service like BackBlaze. BackBlaze is the well-known online backup service we like and recommend since CrashPlan no longer serves home users, but there are also competitors like Carbonite and MozyHome. For a low monthly fee (about $5 a month), these programs run in the background on your PC or Mac, automatically backing up your files to the service’s web storage. If you ever lose those files and need them again, you can restore them. Pros: Online backup protects you against any type of data loss–hard drive failure, theft, natural disasters, and everything in between. Cons: These services usually cost money (see the next section for more details), and the initial backup can take much longer than it would on an external drive–especially if you have a lot of files.

• Use a Cloud Storage Service: Backup purists will say this isn’t technically a backup method, but for most people, it serves a similar enough purpose. Rather than just storing your files on your computer’s hard drive, you can store them on a service like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or a similar cloud storage service. They’ll then automatically sync to your online account and to your other PCs. If your hard drive dies, you’ll still have the copies of the files stored online and on your other computers. Pros: This method is easy, fast, and in many cases, free, and since it’s online, it protects you against all types of data loss. Cons: Most cloud services only offer a few gigabytes of space for free, so this only works if you have a small number of files you want to back up, or if you’re willing to pay for extra storage. Depending on the files you want to back up, this method can either be simpler or more complicated than a straight-up backup program.

While backup programs like BackBlaze and cloud storage services like Dropbox are both online backups, they work in fundamentally different ways. Dropbox is designed to sync your files between PCs, while BackBlaze and similar services are designed to backup large amounts of files. BackBlaze will keep multiple copies of different versions of your files, so you can restore the file exactly as it was from many points in its history. And, while services like Dropbox are free for small amounts of space, BackBlaze’s low price is for as big a backup as you want. Depending on how much data you have, one could be cheaper than the other.

BackBlaze and Carbonite do have one big limitation you should keep in mind. If you delete a file on your computer, it will be deleted from your online backups after 30 days. You can’t go back and recover a deleted file or the previous version of a file after this 30 day period. So be careful when deleting those files if you might want them back!

One Backup Isn’t Enough: Use Multiple Methods

So which should you use? Ideally, you’d use at least two of them. Why? Because you want both offsite and onsite backups.

“Onsite” literally means backups stored at the same physical location as you. So, if you back up to an external hard drive and store that at home with your home PC, that’s an onsite backup.

Offsite backups are stored at a different location. So, if you back up to an online server, like BackBlaze or Dropbox, that’s an offsite backup.

Onsite backups are faster and easier, and should be your first line of defense against data loss. If you lose files, you can quickly restore them from an external drive. But you shouldn’t rely on onsite backups alone. If your home burns down or all the hardware in it is stolen by thieves, you’d lose all your files.

Offsite backups don’t have to be a server on the Internet, either, and you don’t have to pay a monthly subscription for one. You could back up your files to a hard drive and store it at your office, at a friend’s house, or in a bank vault, for example. It’d be a bit more inconvenient, but that’s technically an offsite backup.

Similarly, you could also store your files in Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive and performing regular backups to an external drive. Or you could use BackBlaze to back up online and Windows File History to create a local backup. There are a lot of ways to use these services in tandem, and it’s up to you how to do it. Just make sure you have a solid backup strategy, with onsite and offsite backups, so you have a wide safety net against ever losing your files.

Automate It!

All that may sound complicated, but the more you automate your backup system, the more frequently you’ll be able to back up and the greater the odds you’ll stick with it. That’s why you should use an automated tool instead of copying files to an external drive by hand. You can just set it up once, and forget it.

That’s one reason we really like online services like BackBlaze. If it’s backing up to the internet, it can automatically do that every single day. If you have to plug in an external drive, you have to put in more effort, which means you’ll back up less often and you may eventually stop doing it. Keeping everything automatic is well worth the price.

If you don’t want to pay anything and want to primarily rely on local backups, consider using a file-syncing service like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive to synchronize your important files online. That way, if you ever lose your local backup, you’ll at least have an online copy.

Ultimately, you just need to think about where your files are and ensure you have multiple copies at all times. Ideally, those copies should be in more than one physical location. As long as you’re actually thinking about what you’ll do if your computer dies, you should be way ahead of most people.