Virus attacks are major let downs in a person’s life. Be the attack on their body or their computer system, it is almost like the period of distress with no end.
These days, however, viruses in computers tend to trouble more beings than viruses in their bodies ever could. Running an anti-virus check is tougher than swallowing a dozen medicines all at once to cause the virus in the body to not affect your health adversely.
Computer viruses are malicious software programs coded by certain users having unfair intentions. They may or may not benefit from the same but the trouble they cause to others, they believe is worth it all. Most of these viruses are so designed to duplicate or replicate themselves and coz large scale damage to data or files stored on the system affected. Certain viruses are designed to hack into the information stored in the computer or to trace every action of the computer user to use it to their benefit later. These actions involve the process of inputting a password. Most common viruses tend to exist in exe. file extensions or as data files. Any virus once launched in your computer will spread, like the real virus does.
Spreading of such harmful viruses can lead to minor errors in the functioning of the system and at times even crashing of the operating system or the entire processing going haywire. Such viruses get tough to manage once they are left to replicate themselves onto a system. Hard drives may be swept of all data and other files may be damaged or entirely destroyed.
What are worms?
As much as I wished these worms too were the harmless creepy animals we all hated at some point in our lives or the other, I am much disappointed to say these are not those tube like living beings. Ask a kid who love technology, the first definition you’ll get of a worm would be a work you never knew while you’ll anticipate a worm they hardly know. Computer worms are similar to viruses, besides the fact that they have no requirement of a host program to function. Worms are quick replicating and millions or trillions of copies can affect your computer in the matter of a few second. Worms usually replicate themselves till there is an overload of bandwidth and then they destroy certain files and data stored in the computer and often effect system files too. Worms can also be responsible for your system crashing as at times they are designed to send emails to all your contacts so that the network traffic gets jammed and the system has little else to do than crash or hang.
Trojan Explained
Trojans are not like viruses or worms. Not for your computer at least. Trojans do not self- replicate. Most Trojans attack your computer when you least suspect it of being vulnerable to virus attacks. Trojans are often packaged as a software you will never be apprehensive of downloading and installing. Trojan basically happened to come in safe packaging. Certain Trojans might trace all your actions and give information of it to the hacker or attacker; others might destroy or damage a lot of files or your system. Some might even cause the system to malfunction whereas there will still be a few that are entirely harmless for your system.
Trojans are mostly considered as dangerous or risky as certain types of Trojans might give the hacker access to information such as your bank account details, your credit card number and passwords as well as other confidential data you can hardly afford losing or leaking.
It is thus advisable to use the virtual keyboard to enter any important or confidential information or passwords in your computer as virtual keyboards face only a very small risk of tracing of actions as compared to the general keyboard.
How to identify a virus attack?
- The speed of your system suddenly slows down.
- Your system often displays pop-ups about errors and corrupted files.
- Your operating system crashes or keeps rebooting for no other apparent reason.
What can be done?
Prevention is better than cure. These steps should be taken to prevent viruses:
- Install a reputed antivirus and make sure that it is updated regularly. It will warn you of any potential harms to your computer
- Do not attend or reply to spam mails or download attachments whose sender is unknown to you. Most of these attachments are fixed with viruses specially if they come in emails sent to a number of people.
- Your Firewall should be turned on to prevent access of unauthorized people on your network.
- All your important data should be backed up frequently.
Most of these simple actions will ensure that you hold no regrets later. So spend the time and money now than later. Who wants that nasty virus after all?