subject: Importance of Anti-Virus Software on Your Computer [print this page] Importance of Anti-Virus Software on Your Computer
There have been a lot of computer threats nowadays and the best way to combat these is prevention. In order for you to successfully prevent these threats from invading your computer system, you will need the help of reliable and dependable anti-virus software for your computer.
If you surf the internet very often, the chance of you on getting your computer system infected with computer viruses is high. That is why it is not recommended that you do not have any anti-virus software installed on your computer if you will use it to surf the internet.
There are actually several types of computer viruses namely worms, Trojans, and spy wares.
Worms these behave just like any other types of computer viruses but the difference is that they replicate. They copy themselves until such time that the whole system is filled up by it. Computer worms collect information and then send the information to the creator for fraudulent use.
Trojans these are applications which pretend to be what they claim they are but in reality, they have different purposes and usually their purpose is to collect private data. If you happen to see a pop-up message which instructs you to download a software to fix your computer, most probably, it is just a Trojan which will collect private data saved on your computer and then sends it back to the creator.
Spy wares these are applications which monitor the activities of the user. Keyboard stroke loggers, cookie stealers, and remote administration tools are the common examples of spy wares. Spy wares are also used to collect personal and private information from the user which will be used to send advertisements to the user's computer. These advertisements usually match the internet activity of the user.
