The Chronicles
September 2007
Salutations dear readers and fellow Laurentian neighbors,
Wow! What response from you dear readers! It appears that I touched a cord by mentioning "anti-virus" in the august article. It's true that it is an important subject because without an anti-virus soon our computer friend starts to work very badly, slowing down noticeably. Whether it is free or not, the anti-virus is an indispensable tool. Therefore, let's delve deeper into the subject ...
Last month I explained that an anti-virus, anti-worm or anti-trojan-horse, anti-spam or anti-popup are of the utmost importance when we use the Internet. Here are a few precisions on all of these to help you to understand the dangers and the remedies: an anti-virus is a program designed to protect the micro-computer against harmful programs called viruses, worms etc ... A computer virus is a program developed with the goal of duplicating itself on other computers. Its effect is to harm, by disturbing more or less seriously, the operation of the infected computer. It can be spread through the Internet, but also by means of diskettes, CDRoms, memory sticks etc ... A worm, contrary to a virus, does not need a host program to reproduce. It acts on the operating system of the computer in order to ensure its reproduction. A worm is defined by the way in which it is propagated from machine to machine, but beyond its survival, its goal is always to do damage: to spy, to offer a hidden access point, to destroy data, to send multiple requests towards an Internet site with the aim of saturating it, etc ... The side effects can be a slowing down of the infected machine or of the network, the "crash" of services or systems, etc ... Therefore, a virus and a worm are more or less similar and often an antivirus (commercial or free) will protect you from both.
A Trojan-horse is a type of malevolent software, i.e. a software of legitimate appearance but conceived to carry out, in hiding, harmful actions such as diffusing some of your personal information, eg. your address book. A Trojan-horse is not a virus meaning that it is not duplicated by itself; it is conceived to be duplicated by inexperienced users, attracted for example by the special functions of a program found on the Internet (and most often for free). In the case of such an infection, what is necessary is a specific tool to remove the Trojan-horse in question ... however, it is also important to understand our share of responsibility in the process by having installed "anything and everything" on our computer from the Internet.
Spam is non solicited e-mails usually used for advertising or for dishonest purposes. These messages can contain viruses or worms; their unlimited quantity and their potentially dangerous and offensive contents require an effective tool for filtering.
And finally, a popup is a new window which opens without having been requested between you, the user, and your work screen. Once again, there are the extremely dangerous ones and others which, although not really harmful for the computer can nevertheless, by their number and the place that they occupy on the screen, be downright frustrating even exasperating.
These problems now somewhat defined, let us speak solutions. First of all I would like to suggest to you the best antivirus in the world ... it's the most robust, surest and the least expensive (free) ... this antivirus is ... yourself! Yes, YOU!!! There is no better. I mentioned previously that I have been using for the last 6 years a free anti-virus and that my computer has never been infected ... And here is why: I do not navigate on the Internet any which way, I do not install anything without researching upon it first, I do not open every e-mail (even if it comes from friends). I educate myself before proceeding ... I question everything. That can appear restrictive but, on the contrary, I am more informed, more knowledgeable and more educated about computers. In the end, I know where to go in a secure manner for all the information I need and all the programs which I would like to install.
I can hear you say from here that you would nonetheless like some references therefore ... for a good free anti-virus ( www.avast.com ) or paying ( www.kaspersky.com ). For an anti-popup go to the following Web site: http://toolbar.google.com/T4/ .
Bye for now and look after yourselves!
questions.monamilordi@gmail.com
DID YOU KNOW:
Microsoft launched its first antivirus program named "Live One Care". Even if it was launched at the same time as its new operating system Vista, it is not integrated but sold separately.
This article originally appeared in Main Street – The Laurentians' English Language Community Newspaper.
