Word

Description

Virus

a program or string of code that gets inside a computer and replicates itself
often causing destruction along the way. Even if not designed for destruction,
such as erasing or changing data, a virus can be dangerous because as it contin-ues
to duplicate, it uses up valuable disk space until it crashes the system.
Viruses can be found on any computer storage medium such as a hard disk,
floppy, zip, or CD-ROM. As viruses become more widespread, prudent com-puter
owners should protect themselves by installing virus scan software. These
programs are designed to search the computer.s disk drives each time the ma-chine
is booted and destroy any virus found. As many viruses are introduced
through email (a virus cannot be introduced simply by reading an email mes-sage,
only by opening attachments), users should only open attachments re-ceived
from people they know, and even then, do so with caution.