computer help protection from virus

How to protect your computer from infection and hackers and why is that neccesary?

First you need to know about the different types of virus you can pick up without even knowing it, and why it's important to protect your computer AND your privacy from it.

First take a look at this:

Article from RealTechNews

Pretty scary reading, right?

The following will provide you with the basic knowledge about computer "infections" and the best known types of such

From Wikipedia "A computer-virus is a self-replicating computer program

that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. It behaves in a way similar to a biological-virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells. Extending the analogy, the insertion of a virus into the program is termed as an "infection", and the infected file, or executable code that is not part of a file, is called a "host". Viruses are one of the several types of malicious software or malware. In common parlance, the term "virus" is often extended to refer to worms, trojan horses and other sorts of malware; viruses in the narrow sense of the word are less common than they used to be, compared to other forms of malware.

While these infections can be intentionally destructive, for example, by destroying data, many other virus-types are fairly benign or merely annoying. Some viruses have a delayed payload, which is sometimes called a bomb. For example, it might display a message on a specific day or wait until it has infected a certain number of hosts. A time bomb occurs during a particular date or time, and a logic bomb occurs when the user of a computer takes an action that triggers the bomb. The predominant negative effect of viruses is their uncontrolled self-reproduction, which wastes or overwhelms computer resources."

There are several virus-types, such as:

Trojan horses A Trojan horse is just a computer program. The program pretends to do one thing (like claim to be a picture) but actually does damage when you start it (it can completely erase your files). Trojan horses cannot replicate automatically.
Worms A worm is a piece of software that uses computer networks and security flaws to create copies of itself. A copy of the worm will scan the network for any other machine that has a specific security flaw. It replicates itself to the new machine using the security flaw, and then starts replicating.
E-mail-viruses An e-mail-virus will use an e-mail message as a mode of transport, and usually will copy itself by automatically mailing itself to hundreds of people in the victim's address book. We call them viruses because they share some traits of types of biological-viruses. A computer-virus will pass from one computer to another like a real life biological-virus passes from person to person. For example, it is estimated by experts that the Mydoom worm infected a quarter-million computers in a single day in January of 2004. In March of 1999, the Melissa-virus spread so rapidly that it forced Microsoft and a number of other very large companies to completely turn off their e-mail systems until the virus could be dealt with. Another example is the ILOVEYOU-virus which occurred in 2000 had a similarly disastrous effect.

Why are they here and where do they come from?

Computer-virus - unlike biological-virus - is created by people. Computer-virus simple can not evolve spontaneously, which means that some people actually manufactured them. Creation and distribution of computer-virus is a crime in most parts of the world.

The world changed dramatically with the evolution of computers and especially when computers became a tool for almost everybody, connecting people and companies all over the world and along with the every day use of computers came new types of crime. We call these new crimes Computer Crime, E-Crime, Hi-Tech Crime or Electronic Crime and they include hacking, fraud, confidence tricks and scams, identity theft and piracy and creating and distributing virus is one of the methods to achieve those goals.

According to the article in BBC News of August 2003 the creator of computer-virus and malware has changed over the years from the stereotypical image of the litterate teenager with the right computer tools and knowledge to a more sofisticated virus writer, who's motivated by financial gain.

Identity Theft Prevention Guide Learn every available strategy to prevent yourself from being a victim of the world's fastest growing crime threat ... identity theft. Make sure your computer is safe guarded against spyware and adware.

Okay, so how do we protect our computers from all this?

A Firewall is almost a "must have". If you're running Windows XP, you have the first Windows OS, that came with a build-in firewall. Make sure that your windows firewall is turned on. You can check that by:

Click Start > Settings > Controlpanel (in Classic view scroll down and find the Windows Firewall button - in Catagory view click the Security Center button and then choose Windows Firewall

Make sure The firewall is set to "On" - then click Ok

If you're running an earlier Windows OS, and you want to have a firewall you have two options:

A software firewall which is a program you can buy in any computer store and install on your computer. There are several free firewalls available on the Internet. You will find links to some of them on the bottom of this page.

(You forgot which OS, you're running? No problem! Just right-click My Computer from the desktop and choose Properties There you can see which version of Windows, you're running.)

Or a hardware Firewall If you're connected to the internet through a Router, you may have a firewall build into that. Go through your Router manual or consult your computer store to find out.

Tip! You can read a lot more about firewalls and protection on this website www.firewalls-and-virus-protection.com

Should you still not be convinced of the importance of protection, read this interesting article

Anti Virus

Another, very important thing to do, (and if you read the describtions on the top of this page, I'm sure you will agree!) is to make sure you have some sort of protection against malware. -and now you will have a pretty good idea why that is important.

There are several manufactures of anti virus software. Which one is best? You can also find various sites with comparisons and reviews of the different brands, or you can write down the names of the ones you find and check out the websites and try and figure it out for yourself.

To help you get started, take a look at these sites:

Compare antivirus software
Security suites

Done reading about virus?