antivirus
A virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of
itself into other executable code or documents. A computer virus behaves
in a way similar to a biological
virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells. Extending the
analogy, the insertion of the virus into a program is termed infection,
and the infected file (or executable code that is not part of a file) is
called a host.
Spyware and adware can crash your system in the worst
cases, and this
happens because of bad code, and not because they were suposed to do
so.
The real threat comes from viruses who can delete all your files, or even
cause hardware damages to your system.
This does not necesary mean that viruses are more dangerous than spyware,
it very depends on every user. A simple computer user who only writes
unimportant documents, surf the web and read email, should mainly be
careful not to take a virus, while a person who works with internet
banking, sensitive documents, server passwords, can be much worse affected
by a spyware program which will record and use for evil the above
information.
Most of the best antivirus programs have a free or at least an evaluation
version: Norton Antivirus, Bit Defender, McAfee
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