Antivirus

An malware program is designed to protect your computer from many of the bad programs that exist on the Internet.

A virus is a program that is designed to replicate and transfer it self by attaching to another file of a program that you might commonly use. Today, many viruses can infect data such as Word documents and emails by exploiting a type of “programming language” known as a macro that is part of what gives these programs their advanced abilities. Some viruses are just annoying; however most are designed to destroy data or disable your computer’s ability to connect to the Internet. This is a common source for a trouble call to the ISP, whose technicians likely can not solve the problem. Many of these viruses will send themselves to everyone in your mail list and often mask where the email is actually originated, making it difficult to notify the unknowing user to run an antivirus program on their computer.

A worm, like a virus, is meant to cause trouble on your system. A worm is capable of spreading itself without the aid of other programs. Worms are commonly the cause of connection interruptions because the flood the networks with so much data.

A Trojan Horse is a program that is designed to either look like another program that you may use or like a program that may serve a useful function to you. For example, it may be designed to look like your logon screen, capturing your password when you enter it. Trojan Horses can provide the programmer with full access to your computer and data.

Because of ActiveX, VB Script, macros, and other technologies that are designed to give users more advanced features and a richer computer experience, programmers have found many new ways for their viruses to infect computers and spread their destruction.