Virus&Spyware

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What is a Virus?
A virus is a piece of computer code that attaches itself to a program or file so it can spread from computer to computer, infecting as it travels. Viruses can damage your software, your hardware, and your files. Viruses are designed to replicate and spread to other computers through diskettes, CD-ROMs, email, peer-to-peer file sharing programs and over the Internet.

What is a Trojan Horse?
A Trojan Horse is a malicious program that disguises itself as a beneficial or entertaining program, such as a free game, movie, song, etc., but that actually damages a computer or installs code that can collect passwords or personal information, allow a malicious user to take control of your Computer to launch denial of service attacks or use your Computer to send bulk amounts of spam emails. For a Trojan horse to spread, you must invite these programs onto your computer - For example, by opening an email attachment or downloading and running a ‘free’ file from the internet. Please note: Regular users of any messaging programs (MSN, Yahoo, IRC, etc..) need to be especially wary of receiving Trojan horses in files they accept and download from other people on their contact lists.

What is a Worm?
A Worm is a computer program which replicates itself and is self-propagating. Worms, as opposed to viruses, are meant to spawn in network environments and move from machine to machine across the network connections often clogging the network with useless data causing network and Internet slow-downs.

What is Adware / Spyware?
Spyware and Adware applications are typically bundled as hidden components of freeware or shareware programs that can be downloaded from the Internet. These components monitor your activity on the computer and Internet and can transmit any information in the background to someone else. This activity may include email addresses, passwords, and even banking and credit card information.
Spyware and Adware are similar to a Trojan Horse in that users unwillingly install the product when they are attempting to install something completely different. Some of the most common ways to become infected with spyware and adware is to download toolbars, ‘free’ applications, and especially the peer-to-per file swapping software that are available for free everywhere on the net. Examples: BearShare, Ares, iMesh, Limewire, Kazaa & all the ‘torrent’ programs.
Aside from the questions of ethics and privacy Spyware and Adware steals from the user by taking the computer’s memory and resources and also by eating network and Internet bandwidth as it corresponds back to it’s home base through these connections. Because Spyware and Adware is running in the background, it takes away valuable resources for the programs you wish to use, and this can lead to system crashes or general system instability. Spyware and Adware are the #1 cause of all those annoying popups!
Spyware has the ability to monitor and record keystrokes, scan files on your hard drive, snoop over other programs such as chat programs or word processors, install other spyware, read cookies, and change your default settings. It relays this information back to the spyware author who could use it for advertising and marketing purposes or sell your information to other parties.