Thirty years ago, virus protection was a pretty simple task. The very first virus protection program was known as THE REAPER. THE REAPER was designed specifically to kill one virus, and one virus only. THE CREEPER.
This was plenty enough at the time, since, well… since THE CREEPER was the first and only computer virus in existence at the time.
Times have changed.
Today, a computer virus protection program is going to work on a database of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of known viruses. It’s going to be able to identify and learn how to kill new viruses introduced to the system, and when a virus maker manages to sneak one past the protection program, the people who make the virus killer are going to figure out a way to stop this new breed of virus. This promotes an endless cycle of evolution. Much as the cheetah evolved to catch the antelope and the antelope evolved to dodge the cheetah, the virus evolves to bypass the virus killer and the virus killer evolves to kill the virus, and so on and on.
In the very beginning of the home computer boom, back in the early eighties, the first real viruses as we know them today came to be. Still, they were largely practical jokes put together by high school students who hadn’t realized how far they would go. These viruses were spread by floppy disks and, eventually, by the user networks that would serve as the forbearers of the modern internet. Even then, antivirus protection wasn’t a very big priority. At the time, the concept of a virus that steals personal information was still the stuff of urban legend and cyberpunk science fiction novels. Antivirus programs were still designed just to kill one or two specific viruses, and not legions of them.
It wasn’t until around the late nineties that virus protection became what it is today. With the whole world wired into the internet and thousands of conmen out there trying to make a buck, you can probably thank AOL for the fact that virus killing has become such a huge market.
The bottom line is that you do need to protect yourself. Today’s viruses are not harmless. They are designed specifically to steal from you. Either your money or your personal information, and if you leave yourself unprotected, the scammers out there will get exactly what they’re after.
