I heard an item on the news yesterday about a scam whereby a hacker changed the dial-up phone number to a Premium rate number. The PC owner then had an internet call bill of almost £1000 to pay :(. So I am thinking of installing a spyware and adware programme.
If I install Zonealarm and Ad-ware will those applications cause conflicts with my Avast!4?
I am on 98SE and use IE with dial-up connection.
Zonealarm is a firewall, you should already have one 
Ad-aware is good, but there is not application that can handle all spy-/adware so I suggest you also get spybot s&d.
None of the application will conflict with eachother.
For more info, have a look at the page in my signature.
I would also suggest Spyware Blaster & Spyware Guard both from the same comapny and compliment each other and both work well alongside avast.
I have Zone Alarm, AdAware 6, Spybot Search and Destroy and Avast all installed. The only problem I’ve had is that Avast reports the reference and quarantined files for both of the Spyware scanners as containing viruses, when in fact it’s just the reference files. All I did is add those folders into the Avast ignore list when doing a complete scan and that solved the problem. All three applications are free and are a must for anyone concerned with online security! You may also want to consider using an alternative to Internet Explorer. I’ve tried Opera and Mozilla Firefox and they work great and aren’t a high profile target like Internet Explorer is. Don’t go online without a Firewall! Good Luck!
Thanks for your replies guys. Your advice is much appreciated. I’ll get the programmes you’ve recommended installed immediately.