Computer Viruses and Hoaxes: How To Protect Against Them.
There are over 30,000 known computer viruses and new viruses are being written every day. The number of computer hoaxes (lies) is not as high as the number of viruses, but for the many computer users, who may believe the false information, hoaxes can cause them a lot of emotion and wasted time. The hoaxes are annoying but, if the user can recognize them, can be easily deleted. It is the threat of a computer virus that is the most important to a user because no system is immune to a virus infection. There are methods for detecting a virus, eliminating it and protecting the system from further trouble. .
A computer virus is a piece of software designed to enter a system and infect the files. A virus will duplicate itself and try to infect as many files and systems as possible. If the hard disc is infected and the user saves a file to disk, it will probably infect the disk and will be passed on to other systems that use the infected disc. On the other way, if a virus-infected disk is introduced to the system, it will infect the system. ("What Is A Virus?" 1) .
There are four main types of computer viruses; boot sector, file or program, macro, and multipartite. The boot sector viruses are usually transmitted by an infected floppy disk that is left in the disc drive and then the system is rebooted. The virus is then read from the floppy to the master boot record of the hard drive and when the computer is booted up, the virus goes into the system's memory. (Types Of Viruses 1) File or program viruses are "pieces of viral code that attach themselves to executable programs. Once the infected program is run, the virus is transferred to your system's memory and may replicate itself further" (Types of Viruses 1). The macro viruses are the most common because they infect files run by applications that use macro languages (Microsoft Word or Excel).