What is a Virus?

A virus is a like the flu, except instead of affecting you, it goes after your computer. Just like the flu, a computer virus can slow down your computer, degrade its functioning and even spread to other computers.

A virus will often try to delete files on your computer, or attack parts of its operating system in an attempt to shut down your machine completely. Less malicious types of viruses often duplicate themselves hundreds of times and send these copies to everyone in your address book.

For an up-to-date list of viruses, please check: Symantec Security Center

You will also find information about manual fixes on the Symantec website for most known viruses. If you are not an advanced computer user, or do not feel confident in working with your computer's sensitive files, please arrange for a qualified technician to be on hand or to do the work.

What is a Trojan Horse?

A Trojan Horse is computer code that pretends to be something harmless so that you interact with it. Once you do, it quickly spreads across your computer just like a virus would. Such pieces of code are technically referred to as 'malware', an abbreviation 'malicious software'.

Trojans can take the form of email attachments (docs, presentations, and spreadsheets), website links or even a gif animation. They can also disguise themselves as helpful software such as system updates and virus scans.

Once inside your computer, a Trojan can do similar damage to a virus. But it can also be used to give a spammer or hacker remote access to your computer which can be really dangerous.

However, unlike a virus, a Trojan cannot start spreading itself the moment you open a spam email. You have to give it access to do so by clicking on its carrier (attachment, web link or software update).

Which is why, just as with viruses, we recommend not clicking on any attachment or link which either looks suspicious, out of place or comes from an unknown source.

What is a Malware?

Malware is the technical abbreviation for the term 'malicious software'. There are several types of malware including:

• Viruses.
• Trojan Horses.
• Trojan Diallers, which are used to move your account over to a different internet service provider, without your permission.
• Spyware, which is designed specifically to search and steal personal and financial information from your computer.

These are just some of the broad categories of malware. There are many other types of software which can classified as malware because they are created with the specific intent of causing damage and have the ability install themselves on your computer without your knowledge or permission.