As you are aware, vandals are at work creating new computer viruses all the time. We mostly hear about the big, awful, scary viruses on the news and we hurry to take the appropriate action, but the large majority of infections are quiet and anonymous. We should give these little termites no less attention as often time they are doing much damage before they are even detected. Their effects run from mostly benign to potentially fatal to their unwilling and unwitting hosts. There are two different approaches to dealing with them: Prevention and Cure.
Preventing virus infection begins with guarding the portals of contact. Do not open suspicious e-mails or attachments without scanning them first. Most anti-virus programs have a right-click option to scan a selected file for viruses, which makes scanning easy. When you download software, eBooks or other items, always save to a file, then scan the file before opening. If you bring in data or software by floppy disk, CD or other portable media, the same rule applies; always scan it first!
Getting a good firewall can help in keeping viruses at bay, but there are too many ways to hide them in regular data or software...