Most individuals are aware of the proliferation of viruses, bugs, trojans, worms, spyware and other malicious malware on the Net, but millions of people, including long-time surfers are hit every day. How can that happen, you might ask.
It so happens that, sometimes, people forget to set automatic updates of the virus database, sometimes the antivirus software is not set up properly and sometimes it just gets switched off by accident or by software.
It is not unheard of for automatic antivirus software updates to become turned off by accident or design. It has happened to me twice this year already. Luckily, Windows 7 warned me and I took notice of that admonition and, most importantly, I corrected the problem.
This is the most important point. If your computer warns you about something, particularly regarding security, do not put off doing something about it. In fact, drop what you are doing and fix the problem immediately.
If you leave you computer exposed to assault by malicious software, you will suffer. It is no use thinking that you are safe because you do not perform online banking or because you do not have sensitive information on your computer, because you have.
Your friends and colleagues entrusted you with their email addresses and names on the understanding that you safeguard their confidentiality.
Some malware only looks for the addresses in your email client software. Then it will harvest those details and spam your friends to distraction. Two of my friends let that happen this year and the only solution for both of them was to acquire a new email address and reformat their hard drive.
For example, I was receiving financial advice from my next door neighbour’s ten-year old kid. It was spam coming from Eastern Europe but it was prepared as if it came from him. He had been hacked and his address book had been sent to spammers. I had thousands of junk email for months.
And do not think that you can just make a filter to send it to the bin. You cannot, because they forge the email headers so that it seems to your anti spam software that each email comes from a different address, the result of which is that your spam filter does not recognise it as spam.
This is bad enough, but it can be a lot worse. Spyware can sit on your computer reading the keys that you press and sending the data back to the boss so that they can spam you on what you just typed.
Does that sound familiar? One day you send email to a friend saying that you are going to repaper and the next day you receive unsolicited email advertising about paint and wallpaper.
If all this sounds familiar, then you have to take action. Type ‘free anti virus software’ into a search engine and set it up in the correct manner. If you have AV software already, check the settings. You have to enable automatic updates.
If you leave your computer always switched on that is all you have to do, but if you switch it off whilst not in use, set the updates to take place when you switch it on.
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with researching the best virus protection software. If you have an interest in such software, please go over to our website now at Computer Antivirus Software