Viruses
Overview
Quite often
after I break the bad news to customers that their computer is infected with a
virus/spware/malware program I am asked –“How
did this happen?”.
The answer, painful as it may be, is that
the responsibility for infection lies squarely on the shoulder of the owner of the computer. If you read this
article in its entirety and heed the advice there’s a good chance your pc won’t
land on my or some other technicians’ desk with a virus infection. Let’s start
with a basic understanding of these programs.
What Is A Virus
A virus is
a computer program whose primary aim is to achieve one or more of the following
goals when it infects your computer:
- Damage or destroy the information on the machine
- Secretly take control of the machine to use it to attack other machines or websites.
- Steal information from the computer to be used for fraud purposes.
- Lock the machine and frighten the user into paying out money (Garda Virus)
- Download additional viruses and infect the machine with additional viruses.
The above
are the most common uses of viruses but these programs have also been used for
espionage and attacking and disabling military and commercial computer systems.
A recent virus was specifically written to attack equipment being used by Iran in their
nuclear program. The authors although still unknown are likely to have been a
government. Paypal and visa have both been targets of attacks which originated
from computers which had been infected by a virus designed to crash their
websites.
Defending Your Computer
There are
several key steps to ensure you do not become a victim of a virus and of these
the most important is to ensure you have a working
valid and capable anti-virus program. The free versions, and we all like
something free, simply do not have sufficient features and strength to adequately
protect your computer. Put another way, if you use a free anti-virus you put
your computer at risk of virus infection and you have only yourself to blame
when and if it occurs.
Free Trial of Anti-Virus Software
On my
website at http://www.reidyonline.com/compareav.htm
you will find videos comparing some of the most popular anti-virus programs in
use against what I believe is a far
superior product. You will also find a “free”
30 day trial of the software (click here To Download The Trial). My next article will continue with this topic.
Oliver Reidy is a computer technician and has been in the industry since 1981.You
can contact him by Clicking here or visit http://www.reidyonline.com/contactus.htm
