New Computer Viruses

Everyday new computer viruses are released that could potentially damage the programs and data on your computer. Many computers have viruses and the users are completely unaware of their existence.  These new computer viruses are growing and spreading often in stealth mode just waiting to destroy your online world.

So What is A Computer Virus?

A computer virus is simply another software application.  The new computer virus application has a purpose, just like your word processor is designed to help you write documents viruses are designed by their programmers to destroy files on your computer.

Viruses cannot physically destroy the components in your computer, but they can delete files, corrupt files and reformat hard disks, thus destroying access to your data and computer programmes.

What Triggers a Computer Virus?

A computer that is not connected to the outside world and never has any disks, USB sticks of other external data sources connected to it physically cannot get infected by a computer virus.  When you attach your computer to a network, insert an infected disk your computer may become infected.

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But as mentioned previously at this point you may not notice any change at all as many new computer viruses have some form of trigger.  This trigger might be something like a certain number of days since it arrived on your computer or triggered by a certain date as with the Friday 13^th Virus.

Or the infamous Michelangelo virus, with this virus your computer becomes infected and you notice no changes, the boot sector of your hard drive is infected and then on the anniversary of Michelangelo’s birthday 6^th March the destructive part of the virus code is triggered.

What are the Effects of New Computer Viruses?

As mentioned previously some viruses initially have no effect at all then when they strike they can literally do anything that you good do with your computer yourself.  They can delete files, corrupt files, send spoof emails, send virus emails to your address book, create loads of additional files that clog up your computer, re map your keyboards so all the keys are in the wrong place, their effects can destroy your online world and delete it make all your data, word-processing document spreadsheets and any other data file unusable.

Preventing New Computer Viruses

New Computer Viruses can be prevented, you need to ensure that you have antivirus software installed on your computer and this antivirus software is updated at least daily.  The antivirus software should come from a reputable antivirus company.  The two important things here are that you do update you antivirus software as often as you can as new computer viruses are being developed every day and the antivirus software vendors are including the identification algorithms in their updates every day.  The second point s you are dealing with a specialist antivirus company’s as they will be at the leading edge of virus prevention and correction. So if a new virus is developed they are more likely to have developed preventative measure before your computer becomes infected.