PC Doctor+ Guide 1 Viruses

Get Some Protection: Part 1 Viruses

There was a time not too long ago when viruses still had a certain novelty factor.

Not so now.

The facts are simple enough - if you connect to the Internet then sooner or later your computer will come under attack from a virus. The only question you need to ask is what are you going to do about it.

What Is A Virus?

Put simply a virus is a tiny piece of computer programming code that can be transferred to your computer. They are usually hidden in e-mails, often as attachments but can also transfer themselves on the back of any downloads you undertake from the Internet. MP3 download programs such as Kazaa are notorious for this and users can often download more they bargained for. Once the virus takes up residence on your computer it can do one of several things from creating nuisance behaviour on your computer e.g. interfering with the characters displayed on the screen, to trashing the hard disk completely.

These tiny programs are called viruses because they also have the ability to duplicate sending a copy of themselves to other users over the Internet or via contaminated floppy disks, magnetic tape or compact disks. A common way of transmitting itself is to use the users address book in Outlook as a source of e-mail address to which it can secretly send itself. The user has no idea what is happening.

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