“Caught in his own malicious web, the Virus Man perverts the benefits of our technology. He’s a criminal spreading an epidemic of destruction. Nothing satisfies him more than reports of his handiwork."
Having a good Anti Virus program on your computer is part of a good computer maintenance program. But just because you have an Anti-Virus program DO NOT assume that your computer has the protection it needs!
There was an elderly woman who took pride in keeping all of her family information (including hundreds of family photos) on her computer. She had spent many hours comprising this master piece – saved to her hard drive – and she had received most of this information via email from relatives all over the United States, making it extremely difficult to reproduce.
She started having problems with her computer, yet she ignored it, feeling she had a good Anti-Virus program on her pc, until her computer became completely disabled. The virus had destroyed her computer it was useless -- her Anti-Virus program had not detected a problem — hundreds of hours of hard work lost. How do you think she felt when she had to purchase a new computer and find it was nearly impossible to recreate all of the information she had created over a two years period? Had this woman known how to prevent this catastrophe, she would have saved herself a lot of aggravation, time, and money.
A computer virus works much the same as a human virus however, a computer virus is a destructive, man-made program. It works by covertly attaching itself to a program in your computer system then spreading itself to other programs in your system or to other computers you connect with, including the Internet. A mild virus may print a silly message on your computer screen but a severe virus can destroy your computer beyond repair. Obviously, you don’t want viruses on your computer.
Viruses are classified into three types:
- Viruses
- Trojans
- Worms
A Virus is embedded in a program—called a host — and is designed to spread to other programs, thus contaminating them with the same instructions. This virus corrupts the data, files, or hardware. Moreover, it can cause other malicious occurrences within the computing environment.
Here’s a bit of history about Trojans. The name “Trojan Horses" comes from Greek Mythology. The story was told of a huge hollow, wooden horse filled with soldiers and left outside the gates but when it was brought into the city, the soldiers came out at night and opened the gates to the Greek army, which destroyed the city.
Trojans are disguised as programs that appear to be useful, but when activated corrupt your computer and surrender control to a third party. When you run the program, you spread the virus.
Worms are self-contained programs usually received via email. The program itself is the worm. When the program is started, it is designed to replicate itself continuously -- in memory or on the disk drive -- until there is no more space left for the computer to work. It’s called a worm because it slithers, silently, throughout your computer.
There are several different ways you can get a virus on your computer:
- connecting with other computers (including the Internet).
- opening emails
- sharing information via CD’s or diskettes in your computer.
Although nothing can offer complete immunity, there are precautions you can take. Just having a good Anti-Virus program alone is not enough. Setting the program up to scan executable programs files and email, and updating the virus definitions, at least every 3 days, is essential in good protection against viruses.
