It’s interesting that the word virus can be found in the dictionary (ca. 1993) but not the word anti-virus. Goes to show one how new this all is. But no matter how it’s sliced I would guess that one cannot have an anti-anything without first having a thing to be ‘anti-’ about. But whichever came first, the virus or the anti-virus, is irrelevant when it comes to protecting you, your computer, and the sensitive personal information you happen to store on your box.

And how these programs do the voodoo that they do is something that only techie’s, hackers, and 17-year-old teenagers with a lot of time on their hands know. But that doesn’t matter to us, for the most part. Instead, what is important is that every computer user, even those who aren’t actively surfing the www, have an antivirus program properly installed and regularly updated on their machine. Let me tell you why.

Three years ago I received an email from my sister in Canada. But she didn’t send it to me. It was sent out by a virus on her machine – automatically - to me, my brothers, and my father because we were all listed on her personal email list. My computer was messed up for a few days and my Dad finally had to reinstall Windows on his machine. Quite the nuisance. And ‘yes’, we all had antivirus software on our machines at the time. But one not only gets a nasty infection from Internet emails – a computer can also become infected through offline activities such as insertion of floppy disks, CD’s, DVDs, flash drives, and shared file usage.

You’ve most likely heard of the biggies in the antivirus industry: Norton, McAfee, TrendMicro, Kaspersky, Panda. They all cost around the same ($50 - $70/year with ongoing virus updates). But just make sure that whichever program you use/plan to use is automatically installing regular (that is, every few hours, yes - hours) updates to your machine. Why? Well, I read a recent statistic that the first virus program to propagate worldwide only a few years ago took four days to do so. The last, and most recent, virus to go global took only 15 minutes to do so. And this is only going to get quicker, with advances in technology and networking capabilities. So do your utmost to protect yourself. At ALL times.

So to sum up, I know you’re all good little computer users and you either already have regularly updating antivirus programs on your machines at home, or you’re going to rush over to your nearest Fry’s Electronics, put it on your wish list, and get one for a present from your spouse or partner, right? Good.

Now. . .does anyone have a dictionary that actually defines what an antivirus is?

Written by Andre Best
President, Ultimate Results, Inc.
http://www.andrebest.com - Learn About Life From Another Perspective

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