Anti-Virus
Having Anti-Virus Software should strengthen
your chances of being clean of a Virus, Worm
or Trojan that could infect your computer and
cause you all kinds of problems. Below gives
a brief explanation about what could infect
your computer.
Remember that new viruses are written everyday
and if you intend having Anti-Virus software
on your computer it's important to get the Software
updates, which include protection for all the
latest Viruses.
What is a Virus?
A Virus is a program that propagates itself
by infecting other programs on the same computer.
Viruses can do serious damage, such as erasing
your files or your whole Hard Drive, or they
may just do annoying things. True viruses cannot
spread to a new computer without human assistance,
such as if you trade files with someone else
and give them an infected file (such as on a
floppy, by an email attachment, or downloading
a file from a webpage).
What is a Worm?
Like a Virus, a Worm is also a program that
propagates itself. Unlike a Virus, however,
a worm can spread itself automatically over
the network from one computer to the next. Worms
are not clever or evil, they just take advantage
of automatic file sending and receiving features
found on many modern computers.
What is a Trojan?
A Trojan Horse is a malicious security-breaking
program that is usually disguised as something
quite innocent, (ie: A free game, free software,
mp3'z, picture and possibly other internet downloads)
that can damage and compromise the security
of your computer. It does not replicate or copy
itself and is also passed on by someone emailing
it to you. As soon as its opened it starts to
cause all kinds of havoc, usually silently,
and without the user even knowing its there
until the damage has been done, such as erasing
or modifying your files, even downloading other
Trojan horse programs designed to steal your
passwords.
Many Trojan Horses may also allow dishonest
people to take over your computer and control
it, or use your computer to perform (DoS) Denial
of Service attacks on other Internet users.
Trojans are executable programs, which means
that when you open the file, it will run and
perform some kind of action. Executable programs
have file extensions like "exe", "vbs",
"com", "bat", "pif",
"scr", "lnk", or "js".
It is always better to know the original source
of any email attachments and not to open anything
you are unsure of, especially if it has any
of the above file extensions.
Again, getting yourself a good Firewall
and Anti-Virus Software program lessens your
chances of being a victim of this kind of attack.
If you have been a victim of a Trojan then there
are a number of ways in which they can be removed,
try Hack
Fix the site that's dedicated to helping
people stay informed about Trojan Horse programs,
how to find out if your infected, and how to
remove these Trojans safely from your system.
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