Note: If you read my daily news newsletter, you might have seen a report on a bad Malwarebytes update that was crashing computers. As of April 16, 2013, the company resolved the issue and this program is perfectly safe to install, use and update.

Does "www" stand for "World Wide Web" or "wild, wild west?" The Internet often seems like a lawless and barbaric place, full of threats around every corner.

I've got good news! It's not "every man for himself" out there. For every rootin' tootin' virus-slingin' bandit online there's a sheriff in town.

You can download plenty of excellent free security programs from my Security Center. I've got antivirus, firewalls, anti-spyware and more. You'll want to have all three types of software running.

It's important to remember when it comes to firewalls and antivirus, that you can only have one of each type of program running at once. Running multiple programs of each type can cause conflicts that make you less safe.

Unfortunately, not every security suite can catch every threat. That's why your sheriff needs a deputy.

For that I recommend Malwarebytes. It's capable of finding and removing threats that other software misses. Plus, the free version won't conflict with your existing antivirus.