How to Avoid Software Viruses

A few weeks ago, one of my uncles who had just gotten into the habit of surfing the net was online around midnight

. He saw some cute wallpapers and screen savers on a website that could be downloaded for free, so he decided to download them for use on his wife's PC. But suddenly, after he had downloaded the items to his desktop, virus alerts started popping up on his screen, telling him that his computer might have been infected by a virus. He panicked and called me, asking for advice.

I didn't think it was anything serious, so I asked him to just close the pop-up windows, restart his computer, and then everything would be fine. But after he did everything I said and rebooted, the problem persisted, with more and more pop-ups appearing, slowing down his PC and preventing him from doing any work or surfing at all. His task manager would not run, and his whole computer would just freeze unexpectedly at random times. He called me again for help, and in the end, we only managed to solve the problem by doing a reformat and fresh install of Windows.

With all my experience in computers, I never realized that a computer could be infected just by clicking and closing pop-ups. I had always had the impression that a computer would only be infected by downloading and running malicious files, or at least clicking on website links that directed you to questionable sites. Going online to do some research, I found out that this type of scam was not as rarely seen as I thought. Many hackers utilize this sort of scam to infect and disable user's computers, usually in conjunction with fake anti-virus software, which will claim to be able to 'fix' your PC's problems for just a small fee, when the truth is that the problems were caused by the Antivirus itself. Getting paid to fix a problem caused by yourself, what a scam! No wonder these people are getting rich.

So in the end, I came across a website with some good solid advice on how to avoid this sort of fake anti-virus scams. They suggested keeping your computer constantly updated with the latest anti-virus and anti-spyware software, use a good reliable name-brand firewall (which does not necessarily have to be expensive), avoid downloading freeware or shareware unless it's from a reliable source or you know exactly what it contains, setting your browser security settings to a higher level, and most importantly, NEVER to click on any pop-ups or ads that advertise anti-virus software or protection, especially those that promise to totally fix or speed up your computer immediately. If a product sounds too good to be true, it usually is!

How to Avoid Software Viruses

By: Anna Peacocks

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