First of all, it is important to know what a virus does when it attacks the human body before we can fully comprehend how a computer virus works. Only able to reproduce itself within another living cell or body, a virus is a small organism. Body cells can be damaged as a result of a viral infection and an individual will become ill as consequence. No Adware is an anti-spyware program previously known as a rogue application by Spyware Warrior.
The word virus literally means ‘poison’ in Latin and that is basically what it is - a ‘poison’, able to reproduce itself within another cell or body and an example of an illness caused by a virus is hepatitis. How does this relate to computers? The computer virus can be anywhere on your pc, usually hidden within a program, file or document.
Criminals, and other talented idiots with nothing better to do with their time, create these viruses and spread them to other people’s computers. Causing havoc is the main reason for doing this. Other computers, files or documents can be ‘infected’ by the computer virus, similar to a common virus like the flu (which spreads from one person to another). Computer viruses can affect every part of the computer preventing it from working properly. As well as through removable storage devices such as memory sticks and floppy disks, it can spread itself through the Internet and through local computer networks. It can be unknowingly spread to other computers by the computer user since it is hidden and therefore hard to detect.
What does a computer virus do precisely? A digital virus will literally make your computer ’sick’ and just what each type will do to your computer depends on what it has been programmed to do - some can be very harmful, while others are created to simply annoy. A wide variety of names have been made up, in order to describe different types of computer viruses, some examples are as follows : The first step to learning what to do about viruses is understanding the basics of what they are and how to be entirely control the safety of your computer.
