Privacy, Security & Virus Information

How and why a computer virus can affect you

As much as computers and the internet have become a part of just about everybody's live over the last ten to fifteen years, like the original party pooper, computer viruses have come along to take a lot of the pleasure out of the whole surfing experience adding fear and uncertainty in their place.

Despite all the information and hullabaloo surrounding computer viruses in their various formats, the sad truth is that too high a proportion of the online community are still unaware of what a computer virus is, and how much damage it can cause.

There are a multitude of directions that a virus can take once it has succeeded in infiltrated a computer's system. One of the first chinks in a computer's defensive system that the early hackers succeeded in breaching was to send bogus e-mails with innocent looking links that if clicked open, would cause a virus to download. Thanks to a lot of effort on behalf of the internet security companies, the public became aware that clicking on one of these links was a recipe for disaster, especially if the link pointed to a mini-program that ended with either exe or com.

Once a dodgy link was opened, it would activate itself to either lie dormant in the computer's hard drive to be activated later as part of a global botnet network. In most cases the virus would spring into action immediately. In the good old days when computer hackers were spreading viruses just for fun, the unwelcome visitor would send out a rude message or two, up to wiping out the entire contents of a hard disc or two.

Nowadays, where the entire purpose of the hacking industry is to steal as much money as they can from the global surfing community then their programs are much more sophisticated as well as being very difficult to spot.

That is why the sooner the better that the surfing public realizes that surfing the webs is like surfing in a shark infected sea. Hoping that the sharks won't bite will only work for a while and as long as our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with the positive aspects of the internet then the best form of responsible behaviour that can possibly be adopted is to install the most powerful anti-virus software available on the internet today. The sharks are getting smarter every day and while you can't put a cage around your computer, anti-virus software will take a lot of the risk out of the whole experience.

 

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