Guides
Background articles that are not about any one product. No partner links appear in this section’s introductions; where a guide mentions a product, it is labelled exactly as everywhere else on this site.
How antivirus software works
Signature matching, heuristics and behaviour monitoring; why detection is never perfect; what a false positive is; why running two scanners makes things worse.
How to recognise a phishing message
The five signals you can check in seconds, what to do if you already clicked, and where to report it.
The eight-point security checklist
Ordered by benefit relative to effort. Not one of the eight requires buying anything.
Security glossary
Plain definitions for the vocabulary that marketing copy tends to stretch.
How these guides are written
Primary sources and institutional reporting, with uncertainty stated rather than smoothed over. See our editorial policy. All diagrams are original SVG files drawn for this site.