Viruses

Have you ever gotten a computer virus/trojan/malware?

It's much easier these days to avoid getting them, but back in the days of the 90s, people made viruses for fun, and you'd get them in your e-mail sometimes they'd be disguised as an e-mail from someone you know.

btw, yes, I've gotten viruses and malware before... I was a dumb kid.

I think I got a ton of viruses into the old family computer back when I didn't know anything about Piratebay trust factors lmao.

Palamon said:

Have you ever gotten a computer virus/trojan/malware?

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Never, it's practically impossible for me.

Palamon said:

It's much easier these days to avoid getting them, but back in the days of the 90s, people made viruses for fun, and you'd get them in your e-mail sometimes they'd be disguised as an e-mail from someone you know.

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E-mail is still used for spreading viruses but it isn't very effective method anymore thanks to modern spam filters. If you really want to avoid getting viruses, switch to Linux, there's practically no viruses for it.

I would deal with viruses often, since when I wanted a game or something I would download from every possible website I could find.

...That was when I was a child. And honestly I've still not gotten that much better. Recently my tablet became infected because I was desperately trying to put Mario Kart games on it.

Getting software from the official webpage only tremendously helps in avoiding viruses, at least those who are snuck in by various installers can be avoided that way. It's kind of a massive letdown that M$ so far has failed in providing a good way to install third party applications. These types of package managers are included in basically any Linux distribution since forever. The best thing M$ came up on the other hand is their weird App Store that seems kinda limited.

On my Linux machine it is pretty hard to run into any viruses. Software is either installed via the respective package manager or I download the source code (which I can check for potential problems) and compile it myself.

Mewtwolover said:

If you really want to avoid getting viruses, switch to Linux, there's practically no viruses for it.

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Wait really? So if I open a virus-laden email nothing will happen?

The Roniverse said:

Wait really? So if I open a virus-laden email nothing will happen?

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Technically, an email doesn't specifically carry a virus within itself, rather, it can lead you to run a file with exploitable code (Such as a PDF or Word document that exploits a known vulnerability), or make you run and install a program, sometimes inadvertently (Such as disguising itself as a document and just changing the icon and hiding its extension). It'd be considerably more difficult to make an actual email virus because most email scanners would catch them, and with the wide array of ways to view email (On a phone, using a dedicated application on a computer, within a web browser, etc) it'd be impossible to make one that would work perfectly.