Protection From Malware (Windows Users)

[Jackalope]

I've been deeply involved with computing for a long, long time, and aside from my personal safe computing practices, my number one rule is this: Nobody uses my PC except me. I keep a guest PC for guests to use, firewalled from the rest of my network, with user accounts with no admin privileges. I don't keep anything valuable on this PC, and can re-install it whenever I feel like it.

As far as my own habits go -

• Keep up to date on security and anti-malware patches
  
• Don't install software from questionable / untrusted / unknown (obviously this is a judgement call)
  
• Don't visit questionable websites (another judgement call)
  
• Use browser addons such as AdBlock, Ghostery, NoScript and whitelist exceptions.
  
• Use virtual machines for any high-risk computing
  
• Employ a good backup strategy for important data, including offsite storage and archiving.
  
• Use difficult to exploit passphrases on everything of value wherever possible.
  

For what it's worth, I rarely see a hit in my anti-virus software (because of safe habits), and I haven't had a known successful infection in so long that I can't remember when it last happened (at least 10 years ago).