Just what exactly is a computer virus? It is a program that sits on your computer and the programmer who wrote the code for the virs doesn’t mean it to help you! The virus can be insignificant, a minor annoyance or very serious- attempting to steal your data, crash your computer or extort money by trying to send you to their own website to get a cure for a problem that they put on your computer in the first place
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.
A much bigger threat to the security of your computer comes from the big brothers of these little annoyances. Trojans can sit on your computer and mine data to go back to the virus originator. Key loggers can swipe the keystrokes whilst you are inputting data into a form and are highly serious. Malware and worms can also cause huge problems- you need to have a secure anti-virus program giving you real time protection against viruses. We recommend AVG anti-virus- their program is nothing short of excellent, particularly for a free piece of software.
We receive telephone calls every week from people who don’t have anti-virus software and find their computer behaving erratically. Running your computer without anti-virus software is like making love without contraception. Don’t do it if you aren’t prepared for the outcome, however unintentional. Please make sure you get AVG free downloaded and then run a virus scan.
Our professional advice is that AVG and Anti vir offer the best free anti virus software options. Surprisingly this is one are where free is actually better than the paid for programs offered by the likes of Norton and Mcafee.
