While some viruses can be annoying, some can be down right dangerous to your system. An example of an annoying virus was a classic example called roaches. In this is one of the first viruses in which when ever you moved a desktop icon roaches would scramble around your screen then hide under another icon. Like I said, some viruses are a lot more serious. Their are some viruses that can crash your hard drive and erase all data. With all the data erased your computer can't even start up let alone work. You might even have to by a whole new computer! There are several types of viruses but the four most common are worms, viruses, trojan horse viruses, and e-mail viruses.(Media Network, 1998-2004) As follows:
- Viruses - A virus is a small piece of programming that usually piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such such as Microsoft Word. Each time the word program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs) or cause chaos.
- E-mail viruses - An e-mail virus moves around in
e-mail
messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself
to dozens of people in the victim's e-mail address book. This is a very
deadly virus can it can send messages to everyone in your address book
and thus it can spread really fast.
- Worms - A worm is a small piece of software that
uses
computer networks
and security holes to replicate itself. A worm can find a hole in your
browser security for example and begin to copy itself. To copy itself,
a copy of the worm scans the
network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It
copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then
starts replicating from there, as well.
- Trojan horses - A Trojan horse is simply a computer program. The program claims to do one thing (it may claim to be a game or a movie form Microsoft media player) but instead does damage when you run it (it may erase your hard disk). Trojan horses have no way to replicate automatically. This is also a really dangerous program because if your hard drive gets COMPLETELY erased your computer might not even be able to run and so you will have to buy a new computer.
A. Did a genuine computer security expert send you the alert?
B. Does it urge you to forward the chain letter to everyone you know?
C. Does the email offer a link to an authoritative details page?
If any of the following is true about a suspected virus then there is a good chance that your computer does not have a virus but is instead a hoax. To report any hoax viruses you can email the following site: http://www.vmyths.com/
Now that i've learned about viruses what can i do to protect myself? Well, you can do many things and a lot of them have to do with common sense. The first thing you can do is buy anti virus protection from companies such as Microsoft. Some examples of anti virus programs include, Norton anti virus, and, McAfee anti virus. An average copy of McAfee anti virus goes for about 29.95 (Networks Associates Technology, 2004)! The down side to these programs how ever, is that they can significantly slow down your internet connection among many other things. For example you might go to move your mouse across the screen and it won't move until a few seconds later. It is also important to carefully choose your virus protection because new viruses are being created every day. The software you choose should be easily up-datable so keep up with the current viruses. Anther thing you can do to protect your self is by using common sense. For example, don't click on any pop up ads as they may contain viruses. Some web browsers even have anti pop up options available to the user, such as the Netscape Communicator browser. Many sites have pop ups that say stuff such as "You've Won"