About Viruses
Viruses are programs that run on your computer without your consent and/or knowledge and which do undesirable things. Some infect or delete files, causing your computer to stop functioning or destroying years of work. Others send copies of themselves to everyone in your email address book. There are thousands of viruses with different behaviors.
Viruses usually spread through email, though they can travel on floppy disks, CDs, or any other medium containing infected files. Beyond having up-to-date antivirus software, there isn’t much to do to avoid getting a virus from a floppy disk or CD. However, you can avoid getting viruses via email. If you get an email attachment from a strange address, simply delete the message and the attachment will go with it. If you get an unexpected attachment from someone you know, open it at your own risk. It’s a good idea to confirm with the sender that she actually sent you the attachment before opening it.
About Antivirus Software
The way that antivirus software protects your computer is by distinguishing between legitimate programs (e.g., the Windows operating system, Microsoft Word, and Firefox) and illegitimate programs (i.e., viruses). To make these distinctions, antivirus sofware relies on virus definitions. Since new viruses are created all the time, antivirus software manufacturers constantly update their definitions.
Implication for computer users: You’re only as safe as your latest definitions update. Since the existence of viruses is an unfortunate given, any data loss resulting from virus infection is the fault of the computer user. It is the user’s responsibility to download and install new virus definitions with some frequency (more often being better than less often). At the very least, you should update your definitions once per month.
SLC provides free antivirus software for Windows and for Mac OS X to qualifying members of the college community. Those in other groups may download and use Microsoft Security Essentials (for Windows only).