virus

Viruses:
If you have a major problem with your computer, viruses are one of the first things a computer technician will investigate. As of late -2002 a virus known as "Klez" caused more wide-spread damage than any other virus to date.

They come in many shapes and sizes. The most common way of transmitting a virus these days is through e-mail. Without going into detail, there are boot sector viruses (they load as soon as the PC is turned on), Trojans (hide them selves inside other programs), poly-morphic (they recreate themselves with new names to avoid detection from anti-virus software), and your simple virus that activates at a given time, or when it is run.

A great many of the newer viruses (Klez, I Love You, etc.) not only infect your computer, but they copy your address book (all the people you communicate with via email), and send a copy of the virus to them.

There are web-sites that can create virus like activity on your PC. Some of the ways that this is done i...