Malware
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Viruses - Worms and Trojan Horse
Trojans are programs which infect your computer primarily to do damage, or to harvest information about you. When infecting your computer they begin to replicate and try to find paths into other computers to infect them.
Most trojans can be blocked from attacking you computer by using a competent Antivirus software program, these run in the background when you switch on and scan each bit of data as it comes into your computer and compares it with a database maintained by the vendor of the Antivius software, this type of program will block over 95% of potential attackers.
Please be aware Anti Virus software is NOT a catch all program, it will not block search engines, toolbars, adware, spyware or other programs which you may allow onto your system.
Here are a few free antivirus programs which you can download and install on your computer free of charge;
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Ransom Ware - Crypto Locker
Spyware programs do not spread like viruses; instead they are generally installed by exploiting holes in the users software. They can also be packaged together with user-installed software, such as peer-to-peer applications.[18] Ransomware affects an infected computer in some way, and demands payment to reverse the damage. For example, programs such as CryptoLocker encrypt files securely, and only decrypt them on payment of a substantial sum of money.
Computer users constantly experience problems with junk files, old temporary files, PUP infections and invalid file paths, which are problems are inherent in windows and it needs a strong working knowledge of the Operating System to be able to clean and eradicate these files and programs.
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PUP's - Spyware, keyloggers, adware
Potentially Unwanted Programs, it should be UPS Unwanted Programs that Steal from you.
These are progams, toolbars, search engines and junk that you do not knowingly download, yet appear on your system and cannot get rid of them without an immense amount of trouble and expense!
Scammers and Cyber criminals want to install these unwanted programs on your computer, they monitor your activity, steal your data and leave holes in your system to allow other programs to get in and do their worst.
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ToolBars - Search Engines, spyware
Toolbars can be fancy, colourful, fun gizmo's which sit in your browser and direct you to where-ever or what-ever it is you want!
Well not really! Toolbars are designed to take you where you never thought you wanted to go, or buy things you never thought you wanted and then tell you how much you enjoyed the experience! Sounds familiar
Beware any toolbar as it is designed to "phish" for information, some are reputable but many are not! But they all have one thing in common, they monitor your browsing activity
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Social Media - A gateway to your personal information
Facebook, twitter, my space and others have created a phenoma of social interaction, people communicating with other, telling their inner most thoughts and secrets and much more.
This might have been all great fun, but now commerce is on the scene and advertising is king, companies pay to advertise on your facebook page!
But how do they know what to advertise? They use keywords, which when one appears in your text corresponding to age group, gender, location, education, holidays, work, hobbies, up pops an advert relative to that keyword and if you click on the advert the hosting company takes a commission from the advertiser.
All very innocent isn't it!