Virus Infection
This is a major sore point for many Internet users. Many people think that installing a good antivirus program will make their computer safe from being penetrated by malicious programs. To a great extent this is true, but no virus defense is more than 10-percent effective. Why is this so? It is very simple. Most antivirus programs cannot detect a new virus, even when they use heuristic analyses.
New viruses spread very rapidly and infect all computers that get in their way. The chances are nine out of 10 that, unless you have proper virus defenses installed, your computer will be infected by any new virus strain that hits it. Some time after the outbreak, Internet users update their antiviral bases and remove the virus from their computers. The chances of being infected by the same virus again become much lower, as the new data bases will likely detect it.
As it turns out, antivirus programs deal with infections, whereas we need a means to prevent infection occurring in the first place. A new virus may turn out to be especially malicious and destroy information before you have a chance to update your databases and neutralize it. In such a case, it will be too late to treat the infected computer.
In all of the time that I have been working with computers, no virus has been able to carry out its dirty work on one of my computers. They may get into my computer by way of email or the Internet, but they are immediately rounded up, in most cases without even the assistance of any antivirus utilities. I do, of course, have an antivirus program installed, and I update the databases regularly. In order to economize on computer resources, I do not, however, keep it running at all times. What I do is run periodic sweeps of the system. This reduces the chances of infection but, unfortunately, does not eliminate them completely.
Information about current virus activity can be found on the site of one of the largest antivirus software developers: Kaspersky Laboratories (www.kaspersky.com). The green virus alert code means that activity is low. This code is displayed only when old viruses, for which there are "vaccines", are roaming the Net, or new variants created on the basis of older examples are making the rounds.
When a new virus comes out and starts infecting systems, the virus alert code is raised. This, however, does not make things much easier for us. Having been warned about a new virus, all you can do to protect yourself from it is turn off your computer and wait for your antivirus utility developer to update its databases. You can then download them and continue surfing the Net carefree until next alert.
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Date: 2010-03-12
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