The Why and Wherefore of Anti-virus Programs

We all know how important it is to have an anti-virus program on our computer to catch viruses, malware, prevent identification theft to cut a long story short on. Unauthorised access to your computer via the Internet is commonplace, just read the headlines about hackers accessing and corrupting files in government and military computer systems. Private individuals are as well fair game!

Fool’s paradise

It is unfortunate that some users however live in a fool’s paradise and fail to install an AV program and jeopardise their computer's security. Often their answer is to say they never log onto the Internet and never let anybody access their computer. If this is true they'll probably get away with it. Others say they've got an anti-virus program however when you ask if they update it regularly they’re not sure.

Initially, when I started using computers and knowing full so then the dangers that lurked on the Internet, I purchased Norton anti-virus program. At a glance I was happy with its ability to detect and remove the “nasties”. As each subsequent version came out Norton became more and more complicated. It became too intrusive to my mind. Removing it from your computer was a work of art in fact. Others may so then disagree with my negative attitude towards Norton.

These days I use Microsoft’s free program, Microsoft Security Essentials. This runs nicely with Windows 7 and suits my needs completely with its regular automatic updates and its ability to scan my computer for viruses etc.