Viruses get a lot of publicity, and it's easy to see why. They have an ominous and mysterious aura.
Computer viruses are simply small computer programs that have as their sole aim to do harm.
They are written by disturbed people, the kind of sociopaths who place razor blades in apples at Halloween. Like human viruses, computer viruses can replicate, spreading from one computer to another through shared floppy disks, infected CD-ROM discs, or over the Internet. Computer viruses can't harm your hardware. So the first line of defense, as with every potential computer disaster, is to make regular backups of the vital data stored on your hard drive and to ensure that the backups themselves are reliable. The next safety step is to use antivirus software.