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Computer Viruses: Files
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Even if a virus causes no direct damage to your computer, your inexperience with viruses can mean that damage occurs during the removal process. Many organizations have shredded floppies, deleted files, and done low-level formats of hard disks in their efforts to remove viruses. Even when removal is done perfectly, with no damage to the infected system or files, it is not normally done when the machine is first infected, and the virus in that machine has had a few weeks to spread. The social costs of infection include a loss of reputation and good will. This last point is increasingly significant recently with the rapid increase in network-aware and data stealing viruses.
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In addition to replication, some computer viruses share another commonality: a damage routine that delivers the virus payload. While payloads may only display messages or images, they can ... destroy files, reformat your hard drive, or cause other damage. If the virus does not contain a damage routine, it can cause trouble by consuming storage space and memory, and degrading the overall performance of your computer.
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Over the past two years, many computers at Menlo have been infected, cleaned and re-infected by macro viruses. Macro viruses are pieces of software which exploit a feature in a word processor known as a macro to invade and multiply within that software. The behavior of these viruses ranges from completely harmless to totally destructive. Even though Word has gone through several major revisions since 1997, macro viruses continue to spread at epidemic rates; ... viruses have had a long time to infect computers everywhere. If you have taken any work home from school and opened it in a copy of Microsoft Word, your computer may have been infected. Even if you do not use Microsoft Word, you can carry macro viruses in your documents and infect computers when you give Word files from school to someone else.
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Virtually, no one who uses Windows-based computers is immune from viruses. Every time your computer handles a new file, chances are that it could be infected. In particular, that is the case when you open attachments in your emails, when you download a program from the Internet or when you copy a file from one computer to another. Unless your computer is completely isolated from the outside world, which would make it pretty useless, the risk of infections are quite high.
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There are a number of different effects viruses can have on computers. Some viruses make starting up your computer impossible. Others attach themselves to individual files and change or erase the information within them. Some viruses are less harmful and only display a "humorous" message or image on your monitor.
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As with biological viruses, simple hygiene measures can protect you against computer viruses. "Just as people would wash hands frequently, avoid exposure to people with colds, or use condoms to protect against infectious diseases, computer users should mistrust (and ... not open) files received through unexpected channels or with unknown extensions or subject lines, request confirmation from the sender before opening attachments, and regularly back up hard disks to reduce the risk of losing data," Dr Wassenaar says.
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