Kwan H Lo

How Computer Users Get Viruses?

You may get computer virus and don't know where it comes from.  Read our tips on how to prevent malware attack.

In this era of information technology, what do you think is the worst thing that can happen to a person? Well, honestly speaking, it's waking up in the morning only to find out that your computer is filled with malicious programs. The worst thing is that it is really hard to know where they came from and how they can safely be removed. People these days understand the true destructive powers of viruses, but are confused about how these tend to spread. You need to acknowledge that there are countless ways for viruses to spread. Some of these are:

Email attachments: The most common way for people to get viruses on their computers is through email attachments. In order to protect yourself from getting viruses via email attachments, you have to make sure that you never open an email attachment that you do not know the source. Some people do not open any attachments at all, but instead of being so drastic, just make sure that you do not open unidentified email attachments.

Websites: The worst thing these days is the fact that viruses can attack your computer while you are browsing over the internet. A number of adult and gambling websites are rather unreliable and attempt to access your computer as soon as they are visited. What they do is install adware on your computer and make a plethora of pop ups to appear on your screen. To prevent this from happening, the best thing is to adjust your firewall and antivirus setting to ascertain that outside connections cannot access your computer and install unwanted programs.

Phishing schemes: You need to learn how computer viruses spread to protect not just your computer, but your personal information as well. Phishing schemes are meant to access your personal information and install malicious viruses on to your computer. What they do is send an email from a website that claims to be your bank or your credit card company. Once you click the link given in the email and log in to it, your personal details will be given away. Moreover, it will install spyware, adware as well as viruses on to your computer.

Infected software: There are countless websites out there which offer free games and software. But, the fact remains that these websites purposely infect their freeware with trojans that attack your computer when you download the free software. This is the reason why software must never be downloaded from unreliable sources.

Fake antivirus programs: Antivirus programs can be downloaded off the internet for free nowadays. But, some of these programs do the opposite of what they should be doing. Rather than saving your computer, they tend to infect it with trojans, viruses, malware etc.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR