Computer Viruses, bugs, worms and malware have become a huge concern for computer users everywhere. With increasing usage of internet for financial transactions such as personal banking, stock trading and online shopping, an infected computer no longer limited only to a slow computer. It could cost a computer user thousands of dollars.
Because of the risk involved, antivirus products have become a critical tool for any PC user.
What is a computer Virus?
Computer virus is a software program, with the capability of reproducing itself and execute unwanted and unexpected actions through the insides of your PC.
Although the term “virus” often used to refer all the malicious software programs, computer security experts use different terms for different types of threats.
Trojans and Worms are the most common types of threats, a computer user could encounter. A worm use security vulnerabilities in a computer program to spread itself to other computers without needing to be transferred as part of a host. A Trojan horse is a program that appears harmless but actually contains something harmful.
Another program which may be referred as virus is Spyware, Spyware program is written to gather information from the infected computer and return it to their controller.
Adware is a form of spyware that collects information about a computer user in order to display advertisements in the Web browser targeting the users habits.
Even though Trojans, worms, spyware and viruses are technically different, a good antivirus software will detect all of them and for the sake of simplicity lets refer them all as viruses in this guide.
