A computer virus primer
A computer virus cannot give you a cold or flu or anything more deadly. A computer virus is a program that causes harm to the computer or worry to the user. Today the manner of transmission is usually via the Internet either from web sites that you access or e-mails that you receive. Understand that many people who you inform that they have sent out a virus will not thank you for that information and often it is ignored by small businesses or charities.
Many years ago in the days of 8086 computers there was a little program called drain. You usually ran it from a floppy disc and the prompt on the computer looked normal and then whatever the person tried to do on the computer next the program displayed a warning message that water had been located in the hard drive. The system would now attempt to remove the water. A message was displayed that “the spin dry cycle was started” and it sounded as though a spin dryer was starting and water was gurgling out of the machine. The program completed with the message that “the spin dry cycle was complete”. Mostly this was harmless fun where one person would play a prank on a colleague, friend or a family member. It could cause considerable concern to the person who was suddenly faced with water in their hard drive. I would not recommend this prank being played on someone who had a bad heart. Pranks like this are still perpetrated but the virus in these days is more deadly, and it damages or destroys data or even the computer operating system.
Computer virus detection is big business and has to operate 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Special dates like Friday 13th or 07/07/07 are obvious targets for the virus writers to aim at. You never know when a virus may hit and disable your computer network. I remember turning up for work at an office and every 5 minutes there was a warning broadcast on the public address that no-one was to turn on their computers as the network servers had been attacked by a virus and they did not want any other computers infected before they received the patch. This was a company where every e-mail was scanned by the ISP prior to being allowed onto the local system and then scanned again both at the e-mail server and by your own computer. Always take the time to regularly update your anti-virus software and any anti-spam, adware, spyware, or malware defenses. It is worth paying to allow another year’s updates of anti-virus etc. If it is too expensive then consider the options and give up a meal or two in a restaurant and eat at home
A Trojan horse is what appears to be a harmless or even a helpful program that is in fact harmful and may be deadly. This may be a virus or spyware installation. When you are offered a free program ask if you are 110% certain that the person or web site offering the product has no malicious or financial motive for harming you or your computer. The only way you can be certain is if the program comes from a trusted friend or a well trust web site such as an anti-virus web site. Otherwise do not download.
Put in place a Firewall that can prevent a person or program from accessing your computer. These firewalls can be hardware or software based. Recently I have been researching a wireless’ router for my home network and I noticed that a large number of the routers had a firewall built in to protect from unauthorized access. Also within windows there is a Firewall program and also in a number of the other all-in-one virus and Internet suites such as Norton Internet security or Kaspersky. Put as much in as you can now and then research how effective the computer magazines think this is so you can decide if there is something else on the market that is better.
To run a computer without anti-virus software in these days is like playing Russian roulette. Very quickly you will find your computer gets very badly infected. If you do not believe me then some of the large anti-virus companies offer a facility to check your computer online. Look at Symantec’s web site. I should imagine that McAfee, Kaspersky and others have a similar offer. If you have a computer that is on the Internet and not protected by an anti-virus system then try out one or more of these free offers to see what the state of your computer’s infection is.
Shop around and find yourself some affordable protection. You may need to look on the web, and find out local prices and those on the Internet. If you have any sort of affiliate program running on the web then you may want to look at becoming an affiliate especially if you can save on buying the anti-virus for yourself. Today the anti-virus software can be downloaded from the net but make sure you are on the exact site you want.
