What is Virus

What is Virus? Virus has been around before the inception of the internet, back then it was transferred through floppy disk, but with the advent of internet viruses are more frequently infectimg computer. As the name suggest virus acts same as its biological variant. It spreads unwarranted inside your computer and damaging or affecting either the performance of the computer, or making it to do something not desired.

According to one research:

• 12% of virus infections results in buying a new computer.
• 1 out of every 10 websites on the internet contains a virus threat.
• 1 in 4 emails sent on the internet contains virus.
• Person chances of becoming infected this year are 1 in 3 by a virus.

One should not confuse virus with Spywares or Worms . Worm is closely related to the virus though, but has the extra capability of self replicating itself and spreads on its own. While virus requires some carrier help to spread them. Worms best friend in this regard is email. They use email as a tool to spread without the knowledge of user. Good anti-virus tool encompass both virus and worms. Spyware and its other variants such as key loggers, back door Trojans, adware etc… does not fall into the virus category and requires anti spyware. but they all (spywares, viruses, Trojans, adware) comes into one category called Malware.

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