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What Viruses Do Some viruses prefer damaging the
data on your computer by corrupting programs, deleting files, or erasing your
entire hard disk. Many of the currently known Macintosh viruses are not
designed to do any damage. However, because of bugs (programming errors)
within the virus, an infected system may behave erratically. What Viruses Don't Do Computer viruses don't infect files on
write-protected disks and don't infect documents, except in the case of Word
macro viruses, which infect only documents and templates written in Word 6.0
or higher. They don't infect compressed files either. However, applications
within a compressed file could have been infected before they were
compressed. Viruses also don't infect computer hardware, such as monitors or
computer chips; they only infect software. In addition, Macintosh viruses don't infect
DOS-based computer software and vice versa. For example, the infamous
Michelangelo virus does not infect Macintosh applications. Again, exceptions
to this rule are the Word and Excel macro viruses, which infect spreadsheets,
documents and templates, which can be opened by either Windows or Macintosh
computers. Finally, viruses don't necessarily let you know that
they are there - even after they do something destructive. |
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