Computer viruses are unwanted
computer programs that can invade your hard drive and cause many different
types of damage. Usually viruses are created when someone writes a computer
program and embeds harmful software within that program. As soon as other people
begin downloading that infected program onto their computers, the virus finds
it's way in and negatively alters information stored in the computers. Not one
computer virus is alike, there are millions of diverse programs that cause
varying amounts of damage to a computer.
Just like human viruses, computer
viruses spread rapidly as soon they are created and computers are exposed to
the 'infection'. Although instead of traveling through the air, computer
viruses disperse themselves all over the internet, sometimes you can get a
virus just by clicking on a certain webpage. Many of times computer users will
have a virus in their computer for a long period of time before it is detected
or before it starts causing greater damage. Even when you have anti-virus
software in your computer, it will not always find every virus because the
anti-virus software can only find threats already known through that program's
database.
You may ask, Why would someone create such counterproductive
programs?
Well, there may not be an exact
answer as to why humans knowingly create computer viruses other than to get
some sort of revenge or to challenge their skills. No one will be able to
prevent those people from creating viruses and exposing other computers to
infection, the best thing for computer users to do to prevent such invasion is
to use current anti-virus software and be cautious as to what sites they visit
and what files they download.
When a virus finds it's way into
your computer, it will hide in your hard drive and rapidly duplicate itself
just like virus cells do in humans. You may not be able to tell, but every time
you save your data, you are also saving the virus. Soon enough the virus has
multiplied to such a great extent that it damages your data and causes major
problems.
Although the computer's ROM (Read
Only Memory) will not be affected by a virus, the RAM (Random Access Memory)
and your computer's disks will surely be damaged. So if the virus is only in
the RAM data in your computer, when you shut the computer down the virus will
be lost as well as any other memory that had been held in the random access
memory (RAM).
Unfortunately if the computer virus
is on your hard drive or computer disk it will remain in the computer after you
restart it and it will be there whenever you use the program again. If you
switch from the infected program to another program without shutting down your
computer, the virus will then attach to the other program. With that happening,
that virus will slowly go through infecting all of your computer's programs
before you have a clue that you computer is infected.
Currently, millions and millions of
dollars are spent on efforts to protect computers from viruses and eliminate
destructive virus programs.
Anti-virus programs offered by commercial
and shareware sources were made solely to detect and fix programs that may be
virus infected. These programs should be used to scan for viruses every time
you put a disk into your computer and every time you start up your computer.