I've just purchased a new laptop and want to make it as secure as possible from snoopers, etc. I am running on XP and use the IE browser, and have the McAfee anti-vrius program. I am looking for suggestions to the following:

1. I want to block and clean any spyware applications. What are the better products for this, and do I need more than one product? IE and McAfee both claim to have built in anti-spyware capabilities, but I am not so sure of what these are, and if they are adequate.

2. I want to block any and all types of porn. Both my ISP server for business, and yahoo server for social mail, get porn spam. I delete these on the servers before downloading my mail, but I would like to find a way of keeping the spam from ever hitting my e-addresses at all. I do not know how this has happened, as I do not visit porn sites, and prefer my women in 3D, not 2D. The only connection I can make is surfing on Las Vegas sites which may have linked me to these other sites.

3. I conduct very few e-purchases, but want to make my machine secure so that I can make e-purchases if I so desire. What is the appropriate software for this? I am concerned about key-loggers, credit card theft, etc.

4. I want to delete old files, particularly e-mail messages securely. What are the best kind of shredders for this? I still don't know what happens to an Outlook message when I delete it. My old machine had a shredder on it, but I could never figure out whether it shredded my deleted Outlook messages.

5. I am also interested in encryption. How does this work? Does the recipeint of the e-traffic I send need a compatible decrypter? Or is there an .exe that travels with the message to decrypt after verifying that the message has arrived at the proper location and not at a location that intercepted the message?

Thanks in advance,

M8