Security Sin 1 – expert opinion

jjones | Guides | 13/07/2008 14:23pm
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“The word ‘virus’ is a generic term that includes various kinds of malicious software – Trojans, massmailing worms, network-aware worms, backdoors, hijackers, and many other types.

“Your PC can get a virus from you or other members of your family who use it, or from an unknown person who attacks your computer. It could be your daughter using a thumb drive with her homework after it was used at school, your spouse visiting an unsafe downloads web site, or it could be you carelessly opening a PDF received by email from someone pretending to be your bank.

“Imagine that your computer is a ship, you are the captain, and your operating system (Windows Vista) is your crew that accepts commands from you and operates your ship – the computer hardware. By default, your crew may
perform only basic operations, and for anything else you’ll need to install additional software. An analogy with that is you need to
find new contractors and invite them on the board of your ship to perform tasks not normally handled by your crew. And here
comes the difficulty – where to find a reputable contractor and how to avoid being ripped off.

“Lots of highly reputable software comes for free – that is, the contractor does some job for you for free, with the hope that one
day you’ll hire him again for a more important or responsible job, as now you’ll trust that contractor. But sometimes, the free service is sponsored by someone else, not known to you (free software can be bundled with adware or spyware). Or a contractor may take your money and fake the job, as with ‘rogue’ anti-spyware products that report non-existing viruses.”

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