Archive for the ‘spread’ tag
What is a computer virus?
What is a computer virus? Why should you protect yourself from it?
Computer viruses are small software programs that are designed to spread from one computer to another and to interfere with computer operation.
The term “virus” is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability.
A virus might corrupt or delete data on your computer, use your e-mail program to spread itself to other computers, or even erase everything on your hard disk.
Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.
Computer viruses are often spread by attachments in e-mail messages or instant messaging messages. That is why it is essential that you never open e-mail attachments unless you know who it’s from and you are expecting it.
Viruses can be disguised as attachments of funny images, greeting cards, or audio and video files.
