Good evening to everyone,

When someone gets sick, in most cases, a microbe is responsible for this. Microbes enter our bodies in different ways and make us ill. To get well we need medicines which are called antibiotics. Something similar happens to computers.

The computer viruses of course are not microbes. They are small programs, designed to spread from one computer to another and intervene with its operation.

A virus can corrupt or delete files from your computer, use your email program to spread to other computers or even delete everything from your hard drive!

The viruses are spread easily though the attached file on emails or direct messages. For this reason, it is important not to open email attachments unless you know who they come from and you expect them.

Additionally, they can be contained in attachments with funny photos, birthday cards or video and audio files.

They can also infect your computer through internet downloads. They can hide in seemingly harmless programs such as funny photos, games or other programs which you can download on your computer.

However, how can someone realize that his computer has been infected by a virus? Let’ see some basic indications according to which a computer may have been infected:

-The computer operates more slowly than usual.

-The computer operation stops or often locks.

-The computer shows errors and then restarts.

-The applications on the computer do not work properly.

-There is no access to the hard drives or the disc drives.

In general, when the computer operation is not as it used to be but different and more difficult for the user.

And how can we protect ourselves?

Since no security method is considered to be totally safe, it is important to make backup files of the important files, regularly before we face a virus or other problems. Keep backup files of your important files on another device apart from your computer.

Let’s see now some safety measures which you can use to make your computer a little safer:

• Never open an email attachment which comes from an unknown sender.
• Avoid installing programs and games on your computer when you are not sure about their origin.
• Use firewalls on the Internet. The firewall protects your computer from people who would try to delete information from your system, to make it collapse or even steal passwords or credit cards numbers. Make sure that the firewall is always activated. If you use Windows, you already have a firewall. You can check if it is activated on the control panel.
• Use updated antivirus software. You can find a lot of antivirus software on the market and in good prices. Even though the paid software provide better security there are a lot of free antivirus programs available online which are considered to be reliable.
• Don’t insert in your computer CD, DVD or flash discs, if you are not sure about their content. They may have some type of virus.
• Keep your operational system updated. The high priority updates are crucial for your computer security and reliability. They offer the latest protection against malware activities.