We have never figured out why anyone would want to write or distribute a computer virus. But then we have never figured out why people do so many other nasty things. In any event, computer viruses are a fact of life which must be dealt with.
The obvious thing to do is to purchase a good commercial Anti-Virus program. There are a number of them and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Some are better than others at particular aspects of this problem. But having any of them is better than nothing at all, by far.
Do be aware that the face of virus spreading is changing rapidly. The old problem of getting infected by swapping floppy disks with someone else is still there. But today the real threat is e-mail viruses. When selecting an Anti-Virus program be sure to check out its e-mail scanning capabilities.
Anti-Virus programs come in several grades (and prices) depending on your situation. For a commercial shop running a real network from a server for many users, they are usually priced "per seat", that is a fee per number of users allowed to be connected to the server. For the general home user, our general recommendation is a copy of Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus 2001. It is available at most software outlets, does an excellent e-mail scan, includes a year's worth of free updates and is fairly cheap. Of course, with any anti-virus software check for updates to their signature files often, at least once a month.
And, our general advice is to use common sense when downloading files from the Internet. If someone walked up to you on the street and offered you a free sandwich would you eat it? Of course not! You would be suspicious. Apply that same logic to downloading stuff you find on the Internet, especially from sites not run by companies you know.
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This page last updated on 07/07/04