• Viruses will more likely than not come from someone you know - the majority of these viruses work by transmitting themselves thru the infected computer's address book.  In other words to get the virus mailed to you, you must be in the address book of the infected computer.
  • A virus is a manmade program or piece of code that causes an unexpected, usually negative, event.  Viruses are often disguised as games or images with clever marketing titles such as "Me, nude."
  • Computer Worms are viruses that reside in the active memory of a computer and duplicate themselves. They may send copies of themselves to other computers as through email.
  • A Trojan horse program is a malicious program that pretends to be a benign application; a Trojan horse program purposefully does something the user does not expect. Trojans are not viruses since they do not replicate, but Trojan horse programs can be just as destructive. Some will even disable your virus protection software.

 
  • Virus Protection - If you are going to receive e-mail or be on the Internet (THIS MEANS YOU), your computer needs to be running some kind of virus protection.    

BUT you need to understand - just installing a virus protection program today doesn't mean you are protected today or next week.  There is something called DAT or update files that need to be downloaded and installed at least monthly.  These definition files are created by the makers of the anti-virus program that you purchase (or download).  Cyberterrorists create viruses/worms/trojans daily, it's what they do.  They find and make use of any bad code they find.  So the anti-virus programmers have to create files to catch or find the NEW viruses/worms/trojans and isolate/remove them from your system.

When you purchase Virus protection software, you need to find out WHAT you have to do to get your definition files (are they FREE or do you have to PAY for them too); HOW to install them, WHERE to go to pick up these files; WHEN these files are made available.  Then YOU need to make this happen.  

Many of the programs can be set up to go out and find these updates for you.  BUT MAKE SURE THAT THIS IS ACTUALLY WORKING.  Sure you can set this up, but it you set a time for this program to run and then the computer is not online when that time rolls around, guess what -- It ain't gonna happen.  

You should also run a Full Virus Scan on your system at least once/month.  I run one daily ~ at 2am in the morning ~ it takes 15 minutes.  Start this before you go to bed one night and let it run.  If you have two hard drives set up both drives for scanning.  I would NOT recommend doing a full virus scan on Startup - not unless you have more patience than JOB (of the Bible) - and I have seen this as a default in some programs.  

Somewhere in every program there should be a way to find out what definition file the program is using.

1. With McAfee, you can right click on the blue/red shield in the tray (bottom right hand side of the task bar) > ABOUT 
[NOTE - if you are running McAfee and this Shield is not there - you've got a problem]

2. The pop up screen will tell you what version of McAfee Virus Scan that you are running, the serial number of your program, the virus definition, the date that virus definition was created, and the scan engine that is installed.

3. Make sure that this DATE changes; ie, if you download a dat file this week, you want to make sure that the date on the screen at least reflects the current month/year.  IF it does not, then there is a problem that is causing this scheduled task to fail.  YOU NEED TO FIND OUT WHAT IS CAUSING THE FAILURE AND CORRECT THAT FAILURE.

4. Click OK to close this screen

You can almost always open any program and go to HELP > ABOUT and find the screens that would tell you about the definition files installed.  

I used to use McAfee 6.0 at home but now I use the free AVG virus protection from http://free.grisoft.com.  I use Norton Anti-Virus (SAV 8.0) on my workstations and servers at work.  There are several FREE virus scanners available on the net, but I only have experience with AVG. 
REMEMBER - Windows Critical Updates are as important in protecting your machines as Virus Protection Software
Several ways to get the Windows Updates

  1. START > WINDOWS UPDATES

  2. On the Internet Explorer toolbar TOOLS > WINDOWS UPDATES

  3. Go to http://www.microsoft.com Find the ALL PRODUCTS tab > DOWNLOADS and on that page DOWNLOADS > WINDOWS UPDATES

I've moved most of the tips to a forum format - It's a little more organized :-)) 
I'll keep these pages on this website; but I'll add new stuff to the forum
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