Vital Information Resource Under Siege, aka Virus, is a harmful software program which when executed may alter or even completely destroy files present on your computer. This article will serve as a wake-up call if you are not aware of the destruction that a computer virus is capable of.
Millions of computers across the globe are affected by computer viruses everyday. Viruses are programmed by humans who seriously lack ethical values. They are programmed with a specific objective in mind. Some viruses are capable of wiping off your hard drive data while some others have specific capability of stealing information from your computer for capital gains. At times, they can be so powerful that they can render your computer useless. To put it precise, viruses are those unwanted offshoots of technological advancement.
Types of Virus
Though there are millions of viruses on the Internet today programmed to perform specific tasks, on a broad level, they fall into one of these categories listed below:
- Boot Sector Virus: These viruses affect the boot sector of your hard drive. The boot sector contains the addresses of files located within the hard drive just like an index to a book. Once the boot sector is destroyed, you will not be able to access any other files from your drive.
- Trojan Horses: They are similar to their mythological counterpart. Trojan was the famous wooden horse in which the Greeks hid themselves to enter the city of
- Overwrite Viruses: An overwrite virus does its piece of damage by replacing the contents of a file with its own content thus replicating itself. The only way that you can get rid of these kinds of viruses is to delete the infected file completely, thus losing your valuable information.
- Resident Viruses: This type of virus resides in the memory of the computer. Unlike other virus types which affect the computer and replicate themselves only when a particular program is performed, these resident viruses are capable of infecting the files whenever the computer performs any operation such as reading, copying or writing a file.
- Logic Bombs: These are viruses that are set off when a certain event happens. For example, the Friday the 13th virus unleashes itself when the 13th of a month falls on a Friday. There is one such other virus which gets activated on the 1st of April or is better known as the April Fools day. Once activated, these viruses go about causing huge destruction such as the deletion of files.
Protection from Viruses
Virus can wreck your computer. There are certain lists of precautions that you can take in order to protect your computer from these destructive software parasites that roam the Internet.
- Installation of Antivirus Software: Do a thorough research of the Internet and purchase your personal copy of antivirus software. Once you purchase a licence, you just need to pay a minimal renewal fee every year to update your software against new viruses.
- Update Your Antivirus Software: Every day new viruses are released. Antivirus software companies are completely on their toes to update the list of new viruses released. By keeping your software, you can protect yourself from new virus entrants.
- Keep Antivirus Software Active: It is necessary that you have your antivirus software turned on always, especially when you are working on the Internet. Your antivirus software will closely scan your downloads, incoming and outgoing email messages and external drives attached to your computer.
- Beware of Email Attachments: Most viruses have the habit of replicating themselves by attaching themselves to a mail and forwarding it to an address in your address book. Hence for the same reason, for all that you know, an email attachment from your friend might carry a virus. Just be judgemental about opening your emails.
- Update Your Operating System: Every now and then security patches need to be applied to your operating system to seal security loopholes. Windows XP has a facility by which it can automatically inform you about new updates that are available.
Computer Viruses – The Last Word
While protecting yourself from computer viruses, using antivirus software is the first step; the second step will be to protect your data by backing them up regularly. It is always better to play a safe game than to face the dire consequences, and the subsequent data recovery (more detail on the possibilities and limitations of data rescue).