No. A virus is a type of malware, but not all malware is a virus What are viruses? Viruses are pieces of computer code that infect programs that are otherwise legitimate and harmless. When the infected program is run, the virus executes. The virus might steal data, cause programming to execute that you wouldn’t want, …
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Tag:antivirus
Kaspersky Free Antivirus
Kaspersky’s Free Antivirus will be available in the UK in October 2017 A few weeks ago I discovered that Kaspersky had launched a free antivirus program. I set out to find it but was initially thwarted as they were not making it available in the UK until October 2017. This is where a VPN comes …
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AVG to sell browsing history
AVG has re-worded its privacy policy, confirming that it will sell your browsing and search history Long-term computer support clients of mine may know that I used to recommend AVG’s free antivirus program, but that I eventually stopped doing that because I didn’t like their tactics in “persuading” (misleading?) users to install trial versions of …
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iPad Keyboards and Other Small Things
A few bits and pieces this week.. Tab key Tip When filling in forms online, or even just entering a username and password, it’s much quicker to use the tab and “shift tab” keys to move to the next and previous fields respectively than it is to fumble around with the mouse. If you are …
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Some Antivirus Concepts – 2 of 2
Concluding a look at the basics of Antivirus Software Click here for the first part of this blog How does your antivirus software detect threats? This is likely to be through a combination of two different types of analysis: Signature-based detection – this is when the coding in the file being checked is compared with …
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Some Antivirus Concepts – 1 of 2
Antivirus software intercepts and counteract threats posed by malicious software (“malware”). Malware tries to damage software installations, steal data, or extort money Malware threats can be introduced into your computer system in may ways, including when installing or downloading software, when opening data files that have been infected (such as word processing files), or when …
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Two Years of Blog Posts
It’s a whole year since I was congratulating myself on a whole year’s worth of weekly blog posts So, what’s the same and what’s changed in the last year? To begin with, an update on the items I mentioned a year ago – Microsoft Security Essentials I had recently introduced MSE as the antivirus program …
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A Year of Blog Posts
It’s a year since I started writing this blog every week. Before that I’d just dipped my toe in the water, wondering if I’d got anything useful to say on a regular basis to my computer support clients and potential clients. So, this week I thought I’d have a look back on some of the …
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Antimalware Software
PC Magazine defines antimalware as “An umbrella term for antivirus programs, spyware blockers, intrusion detection systems (IDS’s) and other software that detects and eradicates unwanted input, which in almost all cases comes from the Internet.” – PC Magazine There are two types of antimalware programs – real-time scanners (also called on-access scanners) , and on-demand …
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Suspicious Popup Messages
You are browsing the web when a popup message box suddenly appears suggesting that you have been infected with something, or are at risk of something, or you are being offerred something unexpectedly (and suspiciously). You don’t know whether it’s genuine or not and you may or may not be familiar with the website that …
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