You might have learned your lesson from a previous nasty experience with a computer virus. Or maybe, you’ve been pushing your luck by downloading various files or opening those email messages sent to you by people you don’t know. Either way, it seems that you have no real understanding what you are doing or of just how vulnerable you really are each time you log onto your computer. In this article I am going to give you the opportunity to discover what steps you can take to avoid such annoying and many times destructive infestations.
Listed below are some of the guidelines you can follow in order to keep those nasty viruses from making a mess out of your computer and your life.
1. Purchase and install a well respected antivirus software program and be sure to set it up so that it automatically runs when the computer starts up.
2. Your anti virus software must be kept up to date. You can do this by checking it manually on a weekly basis, or on some software, this can be set up automatically for you.
3. You can also set up your software to automatically scan for viruses each time you open a word document that you recieve through email. This virus is called a Macro Virus.
4. You should only download software from the internet if it is really neccessary. There maybe some great programs available online, but there are also many bad viruses too.
5. Resist swapping data with the use of floppy disks or other mobile storage devices between various computers. If exchanging programs between computers is unavoidable just make sure to scan the storage device(s) for viruses before transferring data from one computer to the next.
6. You must format floppy discs the first time that they are used to transfer data.
7. Don’t install any software that hasn’t been purchased from a well known and trusted vendor.
One of the most common ways of catching a virus is to install pirate software. This is illegal and should never be done.
9. If you must download programs from the internet ALWAYS scan them for viruses BEFORE opening them up to install on your computer.
10. Probably the most important and neglected method of disaster recovery are periodic backups of all important files found on your computer. Should a virus happen to get through your lines of defense you may need to replace the virus corrupted files with fresh ones that have been kept for such an occasion.
Following the steps I have laid out won’t guarantee that you will not be infected, but it will make you far less likely of becoming a victim of a dreaded computer virus.
