Learning From Other’s Mistakes – What Is A Virus?

You should be aware of the risks with owning a computer that can access the World Wide Web. You can contract dangerous programs and processes through normal online activities that can literally ruin your computer from the inside out. These are better known as viruses. But what is a virus?

The reason that they are called viruses makes a lot of sense. They are processes that will infect areas of your fully functional computer and cause it to, in essence, get sick and stop working in part or in whole. Much like any infection, there is always a possibility to become fatal and this is the same with computers.

It is easy to lump spyware and adware together with viruses, but this is actually inaccurate. While they can all be destructive in one way or another, viruses only exist to infect computers and compromise its use. Adware and spyware exist to acquire personal information from a person’s actions online.

To show how ill-informed we truly are about just how one gets a virus, many people still believe that you only can contract a virus through a download from or viewing of a site that you don’t talk about at the dinner table. This is true in part, but not entirely. Viruses can be anywhere now, in emails, on your favorite websites, and innumerable other places online that you and many others find all the time.

The best defense against computer viruses is anti-virus software. There are many names to choose from, yet some of the more popular names in the field include Kaspersky, McAfee and AVG. Most of these companies offer free trial periods of their latest software so that you can see first hand how they work to prevent you from getting infected.

Now that you have a pretty good idea of what a virus is and how it’s quite easy to get one, you should take some measures to get yourself some protection from them and all of the other hazards of Internet access.

It is imperative that you take measures to defend your pc from malicious software and learn exactly what is spyware to help.

categories: computers,software,malware,pc protection

Tags: Adware & Spyware Security, Computers, malware, pc protection, software

This entry was posted on November 27, 2009 at November 27, 2009 and is filed under Adware & Spyware Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.