Many people who have a computer and access to the Internet don’t even know what a trojan horse virus is. Sadly, there are even others who seem to assume the trojan and spyware and viruses are the same and this is a misconception.

A trojan is a bad type of program that is attached to a useful program that can be downloaded from the Internet. I am not saying all programs on the Internet are dangerous, but some are. When you run the downloaded program the trojan quietly installs itself on your computer.

Often trojans are disguised as helpful programs that will scan and remove adware or malware from your computer. The unsuspecting computer user thinks that clicking on a graphic link that says their computer is infected and this ‘tool’ on the website will clean up their computer. Unfortunately, they are misled and the tool that got downloaded just installed a trojan whose payload may cause all sorts of havoc. I have even heard of video player codecs having a trojan horse virus attached to it.

What can trojans do? They can carry just about any kind of destructive payload. They can crash your computer, collect personal information and send it to a specially set up web site in another country. However, the most sinister thing they can do is install what is called a key logger. A key logger records every key press and mouse movement. Do you use your computer for online banking?

There are several ways a computer user can actually get one of these viruses on their computer and not even know it. Unless of course, you have a good computer security software program installed on your computer and warnings will show you that you are attempting to download something that has some kind of threat attached to it. Some of the common types can be remote access, data sending, destructive or malicious, proxy, FTP, security software disabling and DOS, so these should be considered when you download from the Internet.

You can understand the differences by learning more about what you are up against and also will have a better understanding of just what it is that is trying to invade your computer when you download things from the Internet and in some cases other sources such as checking your email. This is how destructive these trojans really are.

There are big differences in the types of viruses, worms and trojans. Much like the trojan horse is named after these programs are designed to make a computer user assume the program itself it for the use of detecting the bad programs on your computer hard drive, when it in fact is the culprit of disaster.

While you might think of it as some kind of worm it is not. A worm is in fact something that will initially spread from computer to computer without the computer user having to do anything.

So, you see why there should be more emphasis on the concept that these two problems are not the same, although both are just as destructive and you need security to actually see what you have installed on your computer, or what is being downloaded on to your computer.

If you have no security programs installed or firewalls present, you are setting yourself up for a bad ending to an invasion of your computer that you won’t believe until it literally hits your computer. Then you will be calling your computer friend and ask them to ‘fix’ your computer by deleting everything and starting over.

Trojan horse viruses are on the rise along with malware, spyware and viruses. Make sure you take the time to learn how to protect your computer from these and other threats lurking on the internet.

John(at) bestantivirusguide.com