Like any “cat and mouse” situation, the smarter the antivirus software gets, the smarter the makers of the viruses try to be. Whether for the intellectual challenge of it or for other reasons, new viruses are continually being developed and sent around the Internet literally, every day, and many of these viruses are specifically designed to defeat the major antivirus software packages.
The antivirus software, no matter how good, can only look for what it “knows” to look for and new viruses come out all the time. As new viruses do come out, the software uses “definitions” that allow it to recognize and deal with them.
Typically definitions will get updated a couple of times per week, which should keep your software up to date and keep your computer virus-free.
You should set your antivirus software to do a full system scan on a regular basis, maybe once per week, as well as enabling the various “automatic” scans of items like email.
You may experience a slight speed lag from time to time as the scans run, but this is a small price to pay for keeping your machine safe.
Finally, every once in a while there may be a virus that moves across the Web so fast that the major antivirus programs will all miss it. In almost every situation like this, the companies will develop a specific software tool that you can download for free, that will allow you to remove the “one that got away.”
Post a Comment