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The personal computer has brought a lot of
interesting things into our lives. Combine the PC with the Internet
and you have a tool in your home that enables you to do almost
anything while sitting at your desk. Having this convenience does
not come without a cost, however, as many people have had to suffer
with virus attacks. There are many different types of viruses that
can infect your computer with one of the worst out there being the
Trojan horse virus. This virus is so named because it resembles the
actual wooden horse that was left outside of the city of
Troy. It looks good to the people of the city but on the inside was
something very bad: Greek soldiers that took over the city that
night. In much the same way, a Trojan virus will be hidden
inside something that will look good. Why is it necessary for
it to hide, and what bad things can they really do
to your computer?
As was already discussed, the this kind of
computer virus
hides inside of another program. It does this because it is unable
to activate itself once it is on your computer. It relies on the
computer user to either attempt to install the infected program,
view an infected file or to modify the program that it is
piggybacked on in some way. Trojan horses will come to you in many
different forms. It may be that you are downloading pictures or
perhaps music to your hard drive and the viruses hid on the inside
of the files. Many times these types of viruses are from e-mail
attachments that are sent to you either by someone you know or as an
unknown sender. They typically have interesting names in order to
entice you to open the file. Once the file is opened, then the
Trojan is activated and at that point it is too late.
A Trojan virus can do any number of things
to your computer. They can completely lock you out of starting your
computer, corrupt your files, open ports on your computer to allow
other viruses to come in and e-mail itself to all of the contacts in
your e-mail program. They can also be set on a
timer. This way there can be many thousands or perhaps even
millions of computers that are affected and they all become actively
infected at the same time. Many times this is done in order to do
what is known as a denial of service attack on a server. Without
your even knowing it, your computer will constantly hit that server
and effectively crash it.
Once a Trojan horse virus is installed on your
computer it is difficult to remove. That is why it is best to
always be careful about file attachments and downloads. If you're
unsure about the security of any file on your system make sure that
you do not activate it. If somebody sends you an e-mail with an
attachment and you are not comfortable with that attachment then
delete the e-mail. If you are proactive in your fight against
viruses and unwanted malware you will be less likely to become infected.
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