Saturday 17 August 2013

Whats The Importance Of Having Anti-Virus Software For Computers

By David Hennet


The importance of having anti-virus software is for prevention of hacker attacks. Computers become vulnerable when there is no protection to prevent viruses from infiltrating your computer. Allowing an attack leads to vital information being stolen and in some cases identity theft.

What are viruses: Virus' are program's created by people then are sent out over the internet via downloads, video, and emails. The purpose is to steal and collect information about you, meaning passwords, account numbers, email contacts and more. If you use or have more than one computer on a network those machines can become infected also.

Once the process starts, it can be difficult to control anything you would normally do on the internet or other important day-to-day tasks. The main system can become overwritten, giving a hacker all the information he or she is looking for. This can be done without your knowledge or consent. It runs in the background and many users are unaware until its too late and damage is already done. It can happen for days on end before noticing.

Being infected by a virus can allow personal and/or private information to be stolen, including social security numbers, bank account numbers, passwords and more. In addition, access to your email accounts will help the individual to gain access and send emails in your name to everyone in your contact list, virtually infecting others.

Where do they come from: Its done by highly intelligent people that write programs to override and rewrite computer programs with well hidden and often undetectable code. Many programmers do it for fun but most for gaining access to financial records in hopes of making their bank accounts bigger while draining yours. These types of programs are released through emails, websites, videos and more recently anything you can download. Individuals all over the world are coming up with news ways to invade peoples lives through use of computers.

What are the various types of viruses: Suppose your computer or networks slow to a crawl. Meaning it takes more time than usual to do one or more things that took only seconds, this is considered a worm. It prevents you from doing tasks at a fast rate and slows you down until you basically give up trying to accomplish anything. It can attack your bandwidth and prevent you from going to websites as normal sending a red flag to your service provider who then in turn contacts you to let you know that your limit is reached.

Trojans take over and preform functions you would not ordinarily do yourself. Malware is not really considered to be a virus but instead spies and sends information to the programmer about the websites you visit. Collection of personal information is also sent to programmers for their personal gain and consequently more spam can be sent to your email addresses as these hackers now know what to target.

It is vital to have anti-virus software for computers, because its important to prevent unwanted guests from gaining this type of personal information. Its critical to protect what is yours and not let anyone steal what they did not earn on their own. No one leaves their doors unlocked and invites a thief into their home. Without having anti-virus software installed on your computer is inviting thieves in.




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