What’s an Anti-Virus?
A computer virus is a malicious code which is capable of loading itself into one’s computer and run against one’s wishes.
Anti-virus software detects and destroys computer viruses.
Impact of Viruses on your Computer
Viruses have a great number of impacts on a computer system.
- They affect the computer speed in terms of processing data and giving information thus making the computer be less responsive than normal.
- They corrupt files in the computer hard drive or other writable media connected to the computer.
- Viruses cause other software/applications in the computer to misbehave.
For example: the mouse pointer might start jumping around on the screen or even stop responding although it’s detected by the computer system.
Why you need an Anti-Virus
A virus can only be countered by an anti-virus which is a software designed to detect, prevent and remove any malicious malware in a computer system.
Anti-virus software pretty much works like the antibodies in the human immune system which identifies and gets rid of anything that’s not supposed to be in the body.
Anti-virus protects the computer system from viruses that can destroy data, crash the computer system or allow spam messages/emails to be sent from your computer.
It ensures maximum protection by scanning the system each time something new is introduced to the computer.
For example: a flash disk or incoming emails will be deleted if it finds any malicious code within them .
New viruses keep popping up each day since cyber crime has risen so quickly.
For this reason, it’s very important that you keep updating your anti-virus so that it can deal with a threat from a virus.
Many viruses do not show any destructive behaviors on the surface, they stay undetected and continue taking as much data as they can.
It’s advisable to adopt a culture of scanning your system at least twice a month just to be on the safe side.
You want to avoid damage that viruses can bring to your computer and not to mention the loss of valuable documents stored within.
On-line Virus Scanning Sites
There are virus scanning sites that can check your hard disk for any virus and remove it.
But one should take caution while using such methods because you can never tell if they are also spreading other viruses to your computer.
Make sure to buy an anti-virus software from a known and credible anti-virus seller.
All anti-virus companies update their database and release the definition files for new viruses so that you can update your anti-virus software on your system.
The risk of losing priceless data is too much for one to bear and thus, one should not forget that prevention is better than a cure.
