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Anti-virus Software and its Importance

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There isn’t much scarier, computer-wise, than clicking on a link only to find yourself inundated with a barrage of pop-ups and unauthorized software downloads. I recall an instance particularly when visiting a website which I thought would assist some troubles with Excel data merging incorrectly with a Word mail merge and I found myself surrounded by popups. As soon as you clicked to make one disappear, it began installing malicious software onto my computer. This example shows that you can be attempting to complete the most innocent task but become infected. Thankfully antivirus software saved my day but for those unfortunate enough to not be protected, it would have been a bad day. Malware, or malicious software, is the general term used to describe any software that is meant to do harm to either you or your device. This can be broken down further into other categories such as viruses, trojan horses, worms, and spyware. The least technologically destructive of these is spyware. This software sits behind the scenes tracking your activity and is responsible for ads and popups that you see. Rarely, spyware records keystrokes which would give hackers access to your passwords, etc. Viruses, trojan horses, and worms are programs which self-propagate and rewrite code on your computer. These items require that you download a file which then in turn harms your computer. With all of these risks, it makes the internet seem like a very scary place. Thankfully there are

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