Just why are viruses harmful? Because they cause damage to your computer components just the way biological viruses are harmful to humans.

Viruses can be annoying and they can be extremely destructive, however they can be fairly easy to prevent. If you have an anti-virus program running at all times on your computer, as well as take great care in opening email attachments, odds are your computer will remain virus free.

By now most users are aware of the need to implement antivirus software on individual systems. But a large percentage of the hardware and software used to provide something for those users to use resides outside them. What are they and what can be done to protect them from virus attacks?

The report of the Byron Review, "Safer Children in a Digital World" has generally been well-received, and rightly so. It offers a balanced view which takes account of both the dangers and the benefits of children using the internet, and it makes a number of useful and practical suggestions which could be implemented to reduce the dangers.

Social networking sites, MySpace, Facebook and Bebo, and have climbed in popularity recently. They allow users to keep in contact with their friends and meet new ones, but they can also expose them to viruses, spyware and other online dangers. As the use of Web 2.0 applications, like wikis, blogs and social networking sites increases, they attract the attention of cyber criminals. Many of the people who use these sites are relatively new to the Internet and they can lack experience in dealing with online threats.