What is a virus and how did I get it?
The word virus has now become synonymous with any unwanted malicious software. The new term now is malware which is short for malicious software. You probably have heard quite a few of the different types of malware out on the internet. There are viruses, spyware, adaware, keyloggers, and lots more. Some range from pretty harmless to potentially dangerous.
New viruses come out everyday, but if you are running updated security software and have updated your windows, you probably don't have to worry about them. Most viruses exploit the bugs or loopholes in software like your internet browser and windows. It is vital to keep updated with the most recent patches as to not be vulnerable against these kinds of attacks. Sometimes you can be tricked into running a virus program or visiting a malicious website. It happens. Sometimes a friend's computer might get infected and then sends out emails to all of their contacts.
What to do
So, time to learn how to get rid of a virus on my laptop computer. Ideally, you would want to stop the virus before it gets on your computer. If you already have the virus on your system then it's critical to remove it as soon as possible to reduce how much damage it can do. Usually most viruses are fairly harmless and just try to inundate you with ads. You really need to get antivirus or security software to scan your computer to fix it. Even if you remove the virus, there can be remnants of it on your computer and the only way to know if you got rid of it is to scan it with an antivirus scanner.
Security software and antivirus is so critical to keeping your computer clean if you browse the internet. When picking a good internet security software, you should go with a trusted name. Another factor is what features it has. The more features, the more protection you receive, but there is also a thing called overhead. Overhead is the computing power needed to run the security software. More overhead means it takes away computing power from what you're really trying to do such as browsing the web or watching a video. If you have a new computer this is probably not that big of a factor.
