One day while doing research using many sites, a window popped up telling me my computer has been infected with several viruses. It looked legitimate and resembled a Windows message or an antivirus program message. It told me to "Click Here" to clean my computer. To the unsuspecting PC user, a click on Okay or Remove and Wham, your computer is now infected.
This is called Scareware. Scareware is a relatively new type of attack, where a user is tricked into downloading what appears to be an antivirus application, which then proceeds to tell you that your PC is infected with hundreds of viruses, and can only be cleaned if you pay for a full license. Of course, these scareware applications are nothing more than malware that hold your PC hostage until you pay the ransom—in most cases, you can't uninstall them or even use the PC. If you ever come across a pop-up with a scare tactic, X out of the web page right away and run a virus scan.
Malware is short for malicious software, and is a general term used to describe all of the viruses, worms, spyware, and pretty much anything that is specifically designed to cause harm to your PC or steal your information.
A virus is a program that copies itself and infects a PC, spreading from one file to another, and then from one PC to another when the files are copied or shared.
Spyware is any software installed on your PC that collects your information without your knowledge, and sends that information back to the creator so they can use your personal information in some nefarious way. This could include keylogging to learn your passwords, watching your searching habits, changing out your browser home and search pages, adding obnoxious browser toolbars, or just stealing your passwords and credit card numbers.
So what can you do to keep your computer safe? I recommend you run both an antivirus and malware program. If you do a lot of web surfing then run them every day. Most programs let you schedule your scans so you don't have to remember to do so. These programs are free and have high ratings. For antivirus programs there are Avast, AVG, Microsoft Security Essentials. For malware programs there are Malwarebytes, Spybot - Search & Destroy, and Ad-Aware which is both malware and a virus protection program.
