Do you know what a computer virus is? Basically, it does what it says on the tin- it infects your computer- some viruses can be little more than an irritation- a cold that causes little more inconvenience than a sniffle. Mainly written be some geek in a teenage bedroom, the intention is to annoy rather than cause massive disruption. At the very least, you should know what’s on your computer, and what it does.
Even the more annoying, relatively minor viruses (or malware) as they are sometimes called, can cause massive problems for you. Viruses can target system programs and processes that may end up in erratic behaviour on your computer, make it crash or cause other (legitimate) programs to fail, corrupt your data, etc.
You might find out that you have a virus on your computer as simply as the fact that your computer slows down for no apparent reason. Sometimes it is very difficult, particularly for the novice computer user but help is at hand. Most anti virus programs have a scan utility. You must make sure that you run a scan regularly. Most of these programs can also be set to scan automatically- at the very least, run a scan at least once a week.
Trojans, key loggers, more serious malware and even computer worms can cause you massive problems, lose money, and even fund terrorism, criminality and worse. Basically, they program is written with the very serious intent of harm or extortion. To protect yourself against these very real threats, you need to have an excellent anti-virus program running on your computer at all times. We recommend AVG anti-virus. Their software is not only free- in my opinion, it out performs the most common commercial programs
If you haven’t been running anti-virus software- you need to get some right now- please get it downloaded and then scan your computer- it really is important. Get some anti-virus software downloaded onto your computer as soon as you can. You won’t regret it.
You may find it to be surprising that AVG free performs much better than many of the commercial programs available over the counter or for download Most of the poor performing software programs offer very limited protection and also insist on your renewing the subscription annually (or after the free 3 months subscription is finished)
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Fri, Sep 25, 2009
PC Security