Preventing Computer Viruses
Viruses spreads when infected files are accessed
- Macro viruses attach themselves to other programs (documents) and spread when the programs are executed (the files are opened)
Worms
- Special type of virus that spread itself without human intervention (sends copies of itself from computer to computer)
Anti-virus software packages check disks and files to ensure that they are virus-free
Incoming e-mail messages are most common source of viruses
- Check attachments to e-mails, use filtering programs to ‘clean’ incoming e-mail