So you now have a PC and you can now Facebook, and send pictures to your family and friends using e-mail, and play games, and so much more! Then two days, two weeks, two months later, it’s just so slow, and there are now so many pop ups you can’t see what you are trying to look at. And don’t try to close them! Sixty more open up in it’s place! But wait! There are also 13 search here now tool bars on your browser and you can only see about an inch of the page. So, much for playing your game.
Now you do what everyone does to fix it. Unplug everything, haul it out to the car, drive a million miles out of your way and get to the PC repair shop. With any luck they are still open. The guy/gal behind the counter tells you there will be a fee of $70.00 to do the diagnostic BEFORE they can fix it.
Just FYI, you should know that all the tools they will use are freeware, which means you can get them for FREE but now that this looser is going to do it for you, your out at least $70.00. (Ok so that was a bit of a rant there. It just burns my buns that someone could do that to another human being.)
So how did this happen?
You NEVER open any email from anyone you don’t know and no one you know has sent you anything because they would never do that to you! And they wouldn’t, unless they didn’t know they had a sick computer too. Viruses, data miners, malware, and a host of other little goodies can be triggered at any time.
Say you downloaded a new plug in for your browser to play that new game everyone is playing. SURPRISE! that download location was not secure and now you have bugs.
Now Grama Jo sends you the pics from her vacation not knowing she has a virus. You open the pics cuz, hey it’s Grama Jo! She would never hurt you! Now you got bugs, the virus has now been sent to EVERYONE in your contact list, and Grama Jo is now a big overweight bald guy , named Bubba, in his birthday suit on your screen and you can’t get him to go away. Sorry kids,now you are scarred for life and Grama Jo will never be seen with the same sweetness again. And the phone is ringing off the hook cuz all your friends are mad that you sent them Grama Jo’s nasty emails.
But nooo we are not done yet! You clicked a link for a deal on socks that is just too good to be true. 100 pairs for a buck! Not letting that get away so you are now giving your personal info and debit/credit card info to a store that is unsecured. Oh and fake. Bad news you ain’t getting your socks but, they gave you PCVD(Computer VD-get it?)
Now you are saying, no that won’t ever happen to me! I know what I am doing. Come on, we’ve all got that one email that we just couldn’t wait to open. We have all done it at one time or another. Even me. Ok so I did it a few times. It happens to everyone.
It happens to everyone. That is why we have anti virus software. It keeps an eye out for us. Helps us when we “pull a stupid”, as I like to say. Sometimes things happen and we just are not thinking. But, our anti virus is always thinking. Always protecting us like a mom does a child. It warns us when we do something that we normally wouldn’t do or when Grama Jo sends that infected picture. It is there to help us.
Will my anti virus ever be wrong?
Of course! Sometimes when I am playing a game mine stops my game and tells me it protected my documents from an “attack” when it was just me saving my game. I then ,cuss a lot, then list my game a safe so it does not happen again. You can teach it things that you do that are not harmful.
You will notice sometimes that it quarantines files that are not infected. It does this because it is not sure. It needs you again to teach it.
Let’s say you have a term paper due. You use a really awesome program to write it and set it to save every 7 minutes. No power outage is gonna take away all your hard work this time! But then, you get a call and a friend wants you to go see that really cool new movie with them. You don’t turn off your pc and go to the movie. Hours later you come home and your paper is gone! You find it in the quarantine after an hour of freaking out. Why did it go in there? It never did that while you were working on it! No, it didn’t because it was changing and saving changes. When you left, every 7 minutes while you were gone it saved an unchanged file. Your anti virus saw this as an attack and stopped it.
Where can I get anti virus?
You can get anti virus almost anywhere now a days. Search online or go to Walmart you are going to find what you are looking for. Most are reasonably priced and renew only once a year. They can cost from $40 and up. Some include 2 or more PCs for the price of one.
What about cheaper options?
Oh let’s talk about my favorite F word….FREE! There are several free options out there too if you are tight on cash or don’t want to spend a dime. There is BitDefender , the free version of the one I use, and AVG Anti Virus. I have used both of the free versions of these two and they work perfectly. Also Bitdefender also has anti virus for your phone and tablet too! They have a free and a paid version.
(I have the paid version but I have NEVER paid a dime for it! Get you a Google Opinions Rewards account and take a few surveys a month and they pay you. Use that to pay for your Bitdefender subscription!)
I hope this helps you understand the need to have an anti virus on your PC.