How Do You Get Computer Viruses?

By: Kay Norman

he worst nightmare of every single computer user out there is to wake up in the morning and find out that your computer has been attacked by viruses. What’s worse is that you don’t know how it made its way in to your computer and you are not sure about how it can be removed. A majority of people these days have a complete understanding of what viruses are and how harmful they can be, however, they are not really sure about how these tend to spread. The fact is that there are multitudes of ways for viruses to spread. Some of the most frequent ways for this to happen are:

Attachments Received via Email

One of the most common ways for people to be attacked by viruses is via email attachments. The best way to save yourself from this happening, make sure that you never open an attachment that you cannot identify. Many computer users these days never open an attachment. However, you do not need to take such drastic steps and just use a bit of common sense while going through your emails.

Websites

The most depressing thing to know these days is that your computer can easily get infected by virus or spyware by merely visiting a website. A majority of gambling and adult websites are not the least bit trustworthy and are going to make attempts to access your computer as soon as you visit them. They usually install adware on to your computer, which causes multitudes of pop ups to appear on your screen every now and then. To avoid such a situation, you need to adjust your antivirus settings and firewall to make sure that no outside connections can access your computer and install unwanted programs on to it.

Phishing Schemes

In order to keep your computer and your personal information safe online, it is necessary to learn how computer viruses spread. Phishing schemes are going to take your personal information and leave you having to deal with a computer that is filled with viruses. Phishing schemes start when you receive an email from a website that claims to be your credit card company or bank. As soon as you click the link given in the email and log in, your personal details are given away. These websites also tend to automatically install adware, spyware and viruses on your computer.

Infected Software

There are multitudes of websites out there that offer free programs and games these days. However, these websites often purposely infect their freeware with trojans so that your computer gets infected (without you even knowing it) each time that you download a piece of software. For this reason, you must never download software from unreliable sources.

Fake Antivirus Programs

Multitudes of antivirus software are available on the internet these days that can be downloaded for free. The worst part is that a majority of these software do exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. Instead of saving you from viruses, trojans etc, they will infect your computer and make things a whole lot worse.