Anti-virus and spyware software does not protect you from all malware, in particular, trojans. Many users, while well aware of the risk posed by viruses, rely on free downloads and never bother to update their protection, wrongly assuming that they are safe.

Quite simply, anti-virus software, as the name suggests, protects against viruses. Known virus signatures are stored by the software in a database, but the authors of malware are constantly changing the code to get around this. Trojans are not viruses and they manifest themselves very differently. Anti-virus software simply alerts your system once an intruder is in – it doesn’t act as a firewall preventing it from getting in. So what can be done to combat trojans?

The only way to ensure your system is free of Trojans is to use a dedicated application to identify and remove the trojan automatically. The best applications may identify and detect millions of different Trojans, but it must be kept updated to ensure that the latest threats are controlled. But will this affect your anti-virus software? You should run both anti-trojan and anti-virus software, and neither should interfere with the other.