PC Medical Emergency

The internet is an amazing and fun place, but like every great city it has its dangers. Taking a wrong turn is very easy and soon you find yourself down the dark allies of the internet, where it is fraught with many dangerous characters, from viruses that corrupt windows and stop it working, to those who try and steal your credit card or bank details.

Having a good Anti-Virus program on your computer is an important way to help stop these dangerous characters getting to your computer and information, however even Anti-Virus programs can’t always physically stop you from installing a virus onto your computer. Once your computer has become infected, you might not even know about it straight away and it can be very hard to get remove the virus.

Is your computer acting strangely?

Have your friends been receiving emails from you, which you haven’t sent?

Have new icons appeared on your desktop that you did not put there?

Is a program other than your Anti-Virus program telling you that you have viruses?

Experiencing pop-up hell?

Constantly being annoyed by unsolicited advertising on your pc screen?

These are just some of the symptoms that may indicate that your computer may have become infected with a virus. Don’t delay in contacting us. The longer your computer stays infected the more time and opportunities these dangerous internet characters have to steal your personal information or to damage your computer.

Virus Definitions

(Definitions from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Adware - Adware or advertising-supported software is any software package which automatically plays, displays, or downloads advertisements to a computer after the software is installed on it or while the application is being used. Some types of adware are also spyware and can be classified as privacy-invasive software.

Virus - A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the user. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer; for instance because a user sent it over a network or the Internet, or carried it on a removable medium such as a floppy disk, CD, DVD, or USB drive. Viruses can increase their chances of spreading to other computers by infecting files on a network file system or a file system that is accessed by another computer.

Viruses are sometimes confused with computer worms and Trojan horses, which are technically different. A worm can use security vulnerabilities to spread itself to other computers without needing to be transferred as part of a host, and a Trojan horse is a program that appears harmless but has a hidden agenda. Worms and Trojans, like viruses, may cause harm to either a computer system's hosted data, functional performance, or networking throughput, when they are executed. Some viruses and other malware have symptoms noticeable to the computer user, but most are surreptitious. This makes it hard for the average user to notice, find and disable and is why specialist anti-virus programs are now commonplace.

Malware - Malware, a portmanteau from the words malicious and software, is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code. The term "computer virus" is sometimes used as a catch-all phrase to include all types of malware, including true viruses.

Worm - A computer worm is a self-replicating computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other nodes (computers on the network) and it may do so without any user intervention. Unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Worms almost always cause at least some harm to the network, if only by consuming bandwidth, whereas viruses almost always corrupt or modify files on a targeted computer.

Trojan - The Trojan horse, also known as trojan, in the context of computing and software, describes a class of computer threats (malware) that appears to perform a desirable function but in fact performs undisclosed malicious functions that allow unauthorized access to the host machine, giving them the ability to save their files on the user's computer or even watch the user's screen and control the computer.

Trojan Horses (not technically a virus) can be easily and unwillingly downloaded. For example, if a computer game is designed such that, when executed by the user, it opens a back door that allows a hacker to control the computer of the user, then the computer game is said to be a Trojan horse. However, if the computer game is legitimate, but was infected by a virus, then it is not a Trojan horse, regardless of what the virus may do when the game is executed. The term is derived from the classical story of the Trojan Horse.

Spyware - Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user's interaction with the computer, without the user's informed consent.