Many viruses are re-engineered into other versions or variants from the original infection. Many of us feel protected by our security programs, but in all reality, they only protect what’s known. The zero day exploits are viruses that morph into a behemoth of panic and confusion. There’s no sure thing and the only defense is discipline.
Virus authors have full control and are always a head of the security front-line. They re-engineer their viruses with better penetration and more destruction to those who fall for the trap. Corporation IT departments are usually ahead of the casual home user, but they’re not close to being locked down from any exploit that has the potential of crippling a company at any moment.
In many cases the new virus variant can’t be removed like the original and additional steps are required to quarantine and remove the infections from the computer. You should always keep your security programs up to date. Most security programs give you the option to receive automatic updates which I would recommend selecting.
Your best defense against viruses is to stay with what you know is safe and browse reputable sites and merchants. If you are unsure if a site is safe or dangerous, than I would recommend that you install a link checker such as “Web of Trust” or “McAfee’s Site Advisor”. Both of these services provide ratings to your browser and search engine results. McAfee’s Site Advisor and Web of Trust offer free add-ons for Firefox and Internet Explorer. You only need to install one of these link checkers. I have been using Web of Trust for more than 3 years and I love the add-on!
The nice thing about link checkers such as the ones I mentioned, also provide you ratings for links inside an email.
Be safe online!
I use both checkers Frank.
Bob jam once explained the differences between Web Of Trust and McAfee SA. One being about trust in 4 catagories ( WOT ) and one ( SA ) about safety in technical sense.
Those two can be used next to eachother and deliver very good additional information when surfing the net.
I’ve made a seperate WOT page on one of my sites with a lot of information about WOT, which is my nr. 1.
See : http://www.celosia.eu/eng/?page_id=308
That page has a link to this great site as well.
Peter
Peter,
I agree, but making a person learn about two products that almost do the same thing can be overwhelming.
In my experience I saw many times that McAfee’s Site Advisor is more accurate than WOT and that’s because WOT is using user voting and this voting can be faked sometimes on most small/medium websites. The big ones are manually reviewed.