In today’s online world, a computer without antivirus software is like driving a car without a seatbelt. There are over 2 billion personal computers in the world (and about 2 billion more smartphones!) – More than half of these computers are networked to the Internet. Most of these users are probably legitimate users who browse the Internet, send email, and check their social media accounts. Sadly, a small percentage of these users take advantage of the fact that innocent people are online to design programs called viruses in order to cause damage to other computers/networks.
Unfortunately, viruses are just one of the many dangers that people face on the Internet. In addition to viruses, there are other types of malware scattered on the Internet that are also referred to as “malware”
A popular example of malware is “spyware”, which sits on your computer and records your actions. This program (which you won’t know is on your computer) can recognize when you visit a website such as PayPal or an online banking platform and start recording your keyboard activity, showing your login details to the spyware creator. The spyware that does this is called a “keylogger”. Over the course of a few days or weeks, you will be shown every email address, username and password combination for every site you log into. These are certainly not the details you want in the hands of criminals!
But how does this software get into your PC? Surely, you can’t download a virus and you’ll be fine? Unfortunately, this is not the case – the hackers who created the software are so smart and cunning that they get into your PC, hide the download link on the page and hide their criminal activities under a trusted name. Something that looks like a download of a Windows update or a movie file may be much less.
You may ask – “How do I protect myself and my PC?”. The first option is to disconnect your PC from the Internet, but I’m sure that’s not the answer you want. The most popular way to protect your PC from keyloggers, viruses and other types of malware is to install anti-virus software. Good antivirus software will find every suspicious piece of software on your computer and fix the problem at its source. The best antivirus software can even stop malware from reaching your hard drive, identifying and removing it before it has a chance to collect or return any data about you or your computer.