Week 7 – Beware of Computer Viruses!

Just like humans, computers (WINDOWS computers/laptops in particular) are prone to get virus(es). A computer virus can have a devastating effect, disrupting productivity and doing serious damages to your digital device. There are various types of computer viruses ranging from email viruses to worms and Trojans. In order for a computer virus to pass from computer to computer, the computer virus has to “hitch” on top of some other program or document to launch its attack. Once a computer virus is running, it can infect other programs or documents.

I have my fair share of experiences in getting my laptop infected by computer viruses. It was a few years back when I was studying in a polytechnic. Back then, the plotting room was popularly visited by students (because it’s free to plot our stuffs there). And there, they have a few computers, but out of those, one was the most commonly used. That particular one was often infected by computer virus(es). Probably because some student had his/her thumb drive/hard disk infected by one and unknowingly plugged into the computer to print their stuff(s). Thereafter, the computer virus began to spread from one user to many others’ storage devices who used that computer.

More than often, the infected users would only realized when their computers/laptops were infected by their storage devices. That’s how the virus started spreading from one computer to many others. It was particularly stressed for the infected users as we have to deal with the virus(es) in our devices and our assignments deadlines. Those whose hard disks had been wiped out by the virus had it even worse (they were almost to the verge of losing all hopes because they have to redo everything from scratch with an even tighter deadline).

Seeing that how vulnerable computers are to viruses, we as Windows users, should protect ourselves against these viruses with a few simple steps:

1) Change your windows computer to a Mac one. Because Mac operating system represents only a small part of the market such that they are targeted by fewer viruses than the Windows operating system. One will be safer on “the Mac side”.

If you insisted on using a Windows like me,  you should…

2) Install a virus protection software such as Norton or any other anti-virus which is available online.

3) Never open or click on suspicious email attachments or links, especially sent by those who you do not know. Be aware of downloading files online too.

4) Try to stick with commercial software purchased officially in legal stores. It’s much safer.

By following these steps, you should be able to remain virus-free 🙂