Viruses

Computer Virus - this is a phrase coined from biology to describe a piece of software that behaves very much like a real virus (only it spreads from computer to computer rather than people!).
What is a computer virus?
A Computer Virus is a computer program that is designed to copy itself repeatedly and attach itself to other computer programs.In the early days of personal computing (1980's) some of the people who created them had a certain misplaced sense of humour. For example, there was a virus that caused all the characters on screen to drop into a heap at the bottom of the display. Very annoying, but relatively harmless. However, quite soon some really nasty versions came out that were deliberately designed to corrupt and delete your files as well as trying to copy itself everywhere.Viruses can cause an immense amount of time wasting and financial loss for people and businesses.For example, the "Melissa" virus was so effective in spreading itself that many huge corporations had to shut down their email systems until the virus could be contained. .It is estimated that there are now around 53,000 computer viruses in existence.
How is a computer virus spread?
The most common way of getting a virus these days is to open an email attachment. Many viruses have been especially designed to take advantage of the way people send emails to each other. Another way is to load an infected file into your computer from some kind of storage device

• floppy disk
• memory stick
• CDROM
• DVD

Note: The CD and DVD products from reputable companies are extremely unlikely to contain a virus. It is the personal 'burned' ones that are a potential problem.It is also possible to pick up a computer virus through what is known as 'peer to peer' file sharing networks. These are internet networks that are used by people to share files amongst each other.There is often no immediate evidence that a virus has been transmitted to a computer, and the user may remain unaware of it until it causes something to go wrong.Basically a virus is spread by allowing it to run (technical term: "execute") on your computer, so any executable file or computer program can contain a virus.

How to guard against viruses

As computer viruses became more of a menace, companies began to develop software to detect and remove them. These became known as anti-virus software.