Computer Viruses -The Scary Facts
Computer viruses are programs that have the potential to replicate themselves. They can be attached to any kind of file and they are usually spread by files being copied and passed on to other people. The reason for the name is that they spread very much like viral diseases. Your computer can contract a virus from a floppy disk or CD that you insert, an email that you read or more commonly when you open a file that is attached to an email, or when you download a file from the internet or even visit an infected web page.
The effect of a virus can be anything from displaying a message or image to destroying files or even blanking your hard drive. Even if a virus is not destructive it can still be a nuisance, taking up space on your hard drive or using processor capacity and making your computer slower. Viruses can be removed although in the worst case you may lose all of the data, files and programs that you had stored on the computer, so it is much better to protect your computer against them ahead of time. Just as with human diseases, prevention is better than cure. Go here to discover 10 tips for preventing computer viruses.
With all the damage that viruses can do, an anti virus program is a necessity these days. This is something that you should factor in to your computer purchase. Although free anti virus software is available, it usually has disadvantages such as inefficiency, instability or infrequent updates resulting in no protection against the latest viruses that are constantly being inflicted on the web by vandals.
Of the major anti virus providers, McAfee is probably the best known and comes highly recommended. Some other well known providers are notorious for their software being incompatible with operating systems or other programs that you may use, but McAfee Virus Scan Plus has high compatibility and almost daily updates that you can set to download automatically when you are online. It also provides a Firewall to protect you against hackers and spyware. This will give your computer the latest protection against computer viruses at all times without you having to do another thing.
