Protect your system from virus and spyware attacks
Virus or Worm Spyware Tips to prevent viruses / spyware Phishing What you can do
Computers are under daily threats from new virus and spyware attacks all trying to disrupt your system or harness the system to allow it to send itself on to more people.
Some viruses are designed to collect personnel information others are designed to make your system unstable or unusable by altering crucial files.
Many viruses are designed to simply copy itself repeatedly which often results in the available memory being used up and the system freezes whilst it tries to recover.
Some variants can send itself to people in an address book or to a network drive if this was happening on a network PC and spread to other PCs. The network itself could become unusable as the virus spreads and disrupts more PCs until the network is shutdown and the virus is identified and isolated.
Many viruses are designed to simply copy itself repeatedly which often results in the available memory being used up and the system freezes whilst it tries to recover.
Some variants can send itself to people in an address book or to a network drive if this was happening on a network PC and spread to other PCs. The network itself could become unusable as the virus spreads and disrupts more PCs until the network is shutdown and the virus is identified and isolated.
Antivirus programs are available to help protect your systems; they regularly check for any virus updates and scan your computer for any infections. If any our found they can normally isolate, repair, or delete the infected file.
The big name antivirus companies are Symantec, McAfee, AVG, Trend Micro, and Sophos. All have products aimed at the home user right through to the business and networked user, with annual cover normally costing around £25/$43.
A worm is a more advanced type of virus which can copy itself and use system memory; it cannot attach itself to other programs. Worms have made the headlines in recent years with several high profile instances of large numbers of computers being infected and spreading rapidly across networks including the largest of the entire Internet.
These is a different threat but similar in many ways to viruses. Spyware typically comes built-in to Peer-to-Peer (P2P), and Toolbar software. Some are without letting the user know, whilst others include mentions deep within terms and conditions so unless you read fully all the text you could be agreeing to let the program install spyware onto your computer.
Virus or Worm Spyware Tips to prevent viruses / spyware Phishing What you can do
