Viruses: protect your computer

Description: The problem of computer viruses has recently received an extensive reputation, such that if it were not for its intrusiveness and perniciousness would be pointless to dwell on the subject. What is less known however is the way they propagate. One of the most common methods of infection is e-mail.

How to protect: the first precaution to be taken is certainly remember to pay considerable attention to e-mail attachments that you receive. If the email you just received is in a foreign language, or in English but from an unknown sender, absolutely DO NOT click on any attachments contained in it: by doing so you start a procedure that could install a virus on your computer, and from there spread to all the other computers on your network. Also be aware that even if the sender is a known person, the message may also contain fragments of evil code without the sender knowledge: she could, in turn, be infected by the virus, which reproduces itself by sending additional copies of itself to everyone on the victim contact list found on that computer.

Other sources of viruses, by transferring data to your PC using: a USB, an external Hard Drive, or a DVD.

So the second thing to do is to install a good antivirus that continuously checks all incoming material on your PC. Good, but for a fee, are for example the known Norton Antivirus and Kaspersky Antivirus. Both in addition to standard functions provide the ability to check email even before it is downloaded from the server. This can be useful, since some viruses in circulation exploit bugs in mail programs, when downloaded are ready to run automatically, even without being clicked.

There is also free antivirus, with not all features but, no less performance of paid ones.

Sometimes it's hard not to think that the software companies that create antiviruses are the one creating and put into circulation the viruses themselves, to keep things on the go and make money on upgrades. Obviously, however, this is no truer than it goes that the accountants were to invent taxes, or doctors medical illness.