What is a computer virus and how do I get one? If you depend on the information stored on your personal computer, you need to understand how computer viruses spread, and you should use anti-virus software to reduce the chance that a computer virus will infect your programs and files.

A computer virus is a program that makes copies of itself and infects diskettes or files. Computer viruses can spread to other computers and files whenever infected diskettes or files are exchanged. Often infected files come as email attachments, even from people you know. The email senders have no idea that they are passing on a file with a virus in it.

Some computer viruses can erase or change the information stored on your computer, other viruses may do little or no harm to your system. Writing and releasing any virus is prohibited by university policy, and anyone who does so will be held legally accountable for damages.

There are currently four types of computer viruses, each spread in a different way.

"Macro" These viruses are spread by sharing document files from MS-Word (version 6.0 and above) or MS-Excel (version 5.0 and above). Macro viruses are a frequent cause of virus infections, and they can infect both PCs and Macintosh computers. After your computer is infected with a macro virus, any Word or Excel document you create or open may also contain the virus.

"Boot Sector" These viruses are spread by sharing diskettes between different computers. Any diskette can spread a boot sector virus --even if it is not a bootable system diskette. If you share files by sharing diskettes, you can spread a boot sector virus to other computers, which then can infect other diskettes.

"Program" These viruses are spread by sharing program files. Because most users share programs less frequently than they share data or document files, this type of virus is less common than others. A program virus can infect other programs and damage data files on your computer.

"Email" or "Hoax" These viruses are not really virus programs at all. They are email messages sent by well-meaning people to warn others about a new virus they read of. These false warning messages usually say "be sure to send this to everyone you know" and warn of major damage to your computer or files. Hoax virus warnings can cause huge amounts of Internet traffic and unnecessary worry to others. Please check with someone knowledgeable about computer viruses before you forward such a message.

There are several things that you should do to protect your computer from virus infections: