Tips on maintaining PC health: Computer viruses

Computer Cold

[cough cough], you turn to see your computer coughing and running with a fever looks like it’s caught a cold more specifically a computer virus. Most computer users have had their computer a bit under the weather: losing information off their hard drive, slower computer performance, and a whole list of other symptoms. Over thirty years ago when computers were just starting to make a rise in people’s lives computer viruses were harder to catch but with the internet an ever growing part of society it becomes more and more common for people s computers to get viruses.

So how do our computers go about catching these bugs? College students seem to be common visitors to peer-to-peer sites like Bit torrent or Limewire where they illegally download movies and songs to their computers. While this may seem harmless and in most cases you do end up getting the song or movie; viruses often piggyback themselves with those files and the end result is a sick computer. So what about the workplace or at home? “I don’t download songs or movies off of the internet!” you might be saying.

Another common virus haven is email attachments from unknown people or in some cases from people that you do know. Your friends most likely don’t know that they sent you an email because in some viruses part of their job is to send themselves to everyone in your address book in order to infect more computers. Common headings from the senders are enticing or seem urgent: “Please open immediately Urgent” or “Open now to receive your prize” “You could be the next winner” anything to get you to open the attachment and thus infect your computer.

So what can you do to protect your computers from catching a cold? The first step(s) is not to use peer-to-peer sites or open spam attachments in your emails. Most email services like Hotmail contain built in software to scan attachments and emails to ensure that it is virus free. Another way to protect your computer is to buy virus protection software like MacAfee or Norton. This software costs anywhere from $30-60.When shopping around for good virus protection; look for one that gets frequent updates because viruses are constantly changing each day. These precautions are more like an immunization rather than a 100% guarantee, and all you can do is make sure you’re protected.

By Harold Larson