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By   posted Thursday, 29th September, 2011 7:04 AM   Comments 0

Anti-virus software is computer program that scans, detects, prevents and takes action to eliminate computer viruses and other malicious software from the computer. In a layman’s language, anti-virus software can be also called a computer’s doctor.

 

Anti-virus is very much necessary for maintaining a computer’s health. One must install the latest version of antivirus on his or her computer and get it updated from time to time so as to ensure the eradication of new and updated viruses from the PC. The regular updating of anti-virus is a must.

 

Computer viruses are very harmful for the PC’s health and the various files and folders stored in it. They are actually software programs which are designed so as to interfere with the operation of the computer. They may make a file corrupt or delete various data.

 

Virus and anti-virus are newer concepts. Both of them emerged in the mid 1980s. Earlier, viruses were mainly spread by infected floppy disks. There were few anti-viruses too, but they were not updated frequently. However, when internet usage became widespread, viruses began to spread online very rapidly. And with this, it became more necessary to install anti-virus software.

 

An anti-virus mostly uses two different techniques to execute its task. It examines the files and folders with the help of the virus dictionaries to check out the known viruses. It also identifies suspicious behavior from any computer program which might indicate infection. Most of the commercial anti-viruses available in the market employ both the techniques.

 

Some of the leading vendors who manufacture anti-virus are Kaspersky, McAfee, Norton, AVG etc. they provide different packages, for example, internet security, total security etc. Anti-viruses are available in single user and multi-user formats.

 

Each anti-virus has got its own way of working when it finds a virus. Sometimes, it may alert you of a virus through a dialog box asking whether you want to remove the virus or sometimes it may remove the virus without asking you. One has to be familiar with the use of the anti-virus he or she uses.

 

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