Friday, September 25, 2009

The Skinny On The Computer Virus

By Owen Hughes

What is a computer virus? Basically, it infects your computer in much the same way as a cold or influenza virus infects a human. Just like biological viruses, computer viruses can be something insignificant- written by a skinny geek in his bedroom. Alternatively, they can be as serious a swine flu- written by expert programmers, attempting to raise money from you, crash your computer, steal your data or worse.

The smaller, more annoying viruses may also go unnoticed for a period of time, sometimes being embedded with a code to activate at a date in the future. The result of this, unwanted activity is that your computer can become unstable and it may also affect other system resources and processes. Even if this effect is unintentional from the programmers point of view, they are no less annoying and potentially serious.

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.

The big brothers of these little annoyances are much more serious. Trojans, key loggers, malware, worms, etc can cause massive problems. It is vital that you use anti virus software that is regularly updated to catch and keep these nasty programs. We recommend AVG anti virus- their software can be downloaded through their website or any of the top, safe download sites. At the very least, download their free anti virus software and install it on your PC.

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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