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| Computer viruses are dangerous how to remove viruses and hot to protect computer from viruses |
What is a computer virus?
A computer virus is a small program that piggybacks on legitimate programs. It is called a virus because it shares the traits of a biological virus where is passes from one computer to another in the same manner a biological virus passes from one person to another person. Once a computer virus is running, it can infect other programs and documents.
Types of computer viruses:
There are many types of viruses but the most common are:
- Viruses: a small software program that attaches itself to other programs and/or documents
- E-mail viruses: these viruses move around through email and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to people in the victim's address book
- Trojan horses: this is a computer program that claims to do one thing but instead does another such as erase your hard drive
- Worms: this is a program that finds a small hole in computer network security and replicates itself on to other computers on that network.
How does a virus get into our computer and how do they spread?
Some of the most common ways a virus can get on your computer are:
- Downloading a program from an unknown source and running it
- Opening a file attachment from an e-mail
- Sharing infected files from one computer to another on a floppy disk
- Opening an electronic greeting card, audio and video files
What are the signs of a virus, am I infected?
- Your computer runs slower than normal
- The computer stops or locks up
- Your computer crashes and restart every few minutes
- The computer restarts on its own and does not run properly
- Applications on your computer do not run properly
- Hard drives or disk are not accessible
- Your computer cannot print properly
- Unusual error messages appear
- Menus and dialog boxes are distorted
What kinds of damage can a virus do?
The damage a computer virus can do depends on the type of virus it is. Here are some common threats.
- They can delete or change files. Some viruses will delete all your files or even reformat your hard drive making your computer unusable
- Other viruses will steal personal information like credit card numbers, account numbers and passwords
- Some viruses will slow down your computer dramatically
- Some viruses change security settings allowing hackers to gain access to your computer and steal information
- Other viruses like worms infect computers on a network
What you can do to protect your computer from viruses?
There are number of ways to protect your computer from a virus:
- Do not open any attachments your received in an e-mail even if you know the person who sent it. That person may not be aware they are sending an infected files.
- If you receive an e-mail with an attachment from some one your do not know, DELETE the e-mail right away.
- Before you copy a file to your computer, scan it with an anti-virus program
- If you download a file from the Internet, copy it to your hard drive first, scan it with an anti-virus program before to open the file or run it.
- if some sends you a greeting card or a joke that you have to launch to view, be awry and stay on the safe side and do not open it
- The best defense against computer viruses and to use an anti-virus program that will scan your e-mail, act as a firewall, hard drive and keep up-to-date with the latest viruses. It is reported that there are over 500 new viruses discovered each month.
Fortunately for us, there are a number of software programs available to prevent, detect and kill computer viruses. I recommend the one below, I use it and it is one of the most popular anti-virus programs around.
