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A virusvirus: a small program written to cause harm to a computer is a simple programprogram: a list of instructions written in a programming language designed to cause harm to someone else's computer. A virus spreads by duplicating and attaching itself to other files. The extent of the damage depends on the virus. There are tens of thousands of viruses.
Some virus damage is insignificant but inconvenient. Some virus damage is disastrous, putting the computer system out of action by erasing files or corrupting datadata: information without context, eg a list of students with numbers beside their names is data, when it's made clear that those numbers represent their placing in a 100 metre race, the data becomes information.
How do you get a virus?
Viruses are written by malicious programmers who wish to cause problems for other computer users.
The primary source of infection these days are emailemail: electronic mail - a message written or typed on a computer and sent electronically rather than by post attachmentsattachment: a file that's 'attached' to an email is called an attachment followed by illegal softwaresoftware: a general term used to describe an application or a program and infected files from the InternetInternet: a global network connecting millions of computers. If you have up to date anti-virusanti-virus: anti-virus software scans all forms of storage devices for viruses and, if found, attempts to remove them software installed this will immediately warn you of any infection. If not, there is usually no evidence of the virus and the user is not usually aware of it until something goes wrong.
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