Virus protection

Virus protection seems to be one of the most important aspects of healthy browsing of the internet. Each week we get numerous virus sent to our email address. Luckily, we have had only one worm virus that affected our computer. This worm virus was actually sent to us, unknowingly, by a genealogical web site. Also luckily, this virus was a passive virus that did not do any damage to our computer. It just attached itself to every email we sent out to other people. Fortunately, one of the people we unknowingly sent this worm virus to had the latest virus protection on their computer, and informed us about the virus, before we sent it to a lot of other people.

When I went to the company which we bought the computer, the manager told us we were fortunate. He informed us that some virus can delete files on your computer, and one particular virus actually destroys your hard drive.

Here are a few helpful hints regarding virus:

Buy a good anti-virus software. Norton and McAfee are two prominent anti-virus suppliers.
Update your anti-virus weekly. An out-of-date virus application offers no, or very little, protection against the new virus that seem to hit the internet daily.
Beware of all email with attachments, even if they come from a friend or family member. A lot of virus are just like the one we received - sent to you by a 'friendly' source. Quite often, a virus is sent out to you because your email address is in someone else's 'address book'.
Do not open attachments that have double extensions. For example: hello.txt.vbs. These are just about always a virus.
When you receive a virus, do not send any more email until you have repaired the problem virus.

Please visit the above mentioned web sites for Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee Anti-Virus for a complete overview of virus protection.