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Virus Information

ChiliTech recognizes the problem our users are having with viruses being installed and causing havoc to their computers and our computer network. This guide will give an overview of viruses and provide some solutions on how to avoid, remove or recover from a virus. Please take some time to review the ChiliTech Terms of Service in regards to the Distribution of Internet viruses.

Types of Infection
There are many different type of Viruses that can infect modern computer systems. The most common types are:

Viruses
A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce by attaching to other programs.

E-mail viruses
An e-mail virus moves around in e-mail messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim's e-mail address book.

Many new viruses send e-mails out showing your e-mail address in the From Field. It may have obtained that address from someone’s e-mail address book or other file that contains a list of e-mail address. The infected computer attempts to send to any e-mail address that it can find, and if it is not a valid address the receiving e-mail servers Mailer Daemon will respond letting whatever address is in the From Field know that they are trying to send to a bad address.

Make sure you do keep your Anti-Virus programs definitions up to date; there are new viruses out every day.

Worms
A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then starts replicating from there, as well.

Trojan horses
A Trojan horse is simply a computer program. The program claims to do one thing (it may claim to be a game) but instead does damage when you run it.

Protecting Yourself

There are several things that you should do to protect your computer from infection.

Antivirus Software

This is basically the immune system for your computer, without updated Anti-virus software a virus can wreak havoc unchecked and unnoticed.

Not only do you need anti-virus software, but it needs to have it's virus definitions kept up to date. There are new viruses every day! Most virus scanners can be set to update automatically.

Recommended Virus Scanners

Windows Updates

Windows Update is the online extension of Windows that helps you get the most out of your computer. Windows Update installs the latest updates and patches that can plug holes and exploits that allow viruses to infect your computer.

You need to be running a version of Internet Explorer 5 or higher in order to use Windows Update.

Download the latest version of Internet Explorer

Once Internet Explorer is installed, you can go to the Windows Update site by typing http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com into the address bar of Internet Explorer.

If you prefer to use a different Web browser, updates to Windows may be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Center.

Firewall Software

Firewall software works to protect your computer by disallowing certain types of Internet traffic to be sent or received to your computer.

Recommended Firewall Software