It’s so easy to get a virus – despite virus checkers and other protection some of them just sneak through.

• Lots of LinkedIn emails – aren’t. If you get an email from Linked In with a zip file attached – don’t open it! It’s not from Linked In and can cause all kinds of problems.
• If you get an email that looks like it has come from your accountant saying ‘Here are financial documents to approve’ – check before opening it. This is one of the latest virus carriers too.

When downloading programmes be careful what you’re accepting along with it. If you download an .exe file that you accept, check what else you are saying yes to. If the download asks you to install additional programs – don’t, unless you are 100% confident that they are a part of the requirements to run that software.
Often this kind of virus aims to open your processor power to someone else. Known as botnet – it gives one person control of thousands of PCs and allows them to jam up the server and stop it working, this is called a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS), it’s not necessarily nasty and destructive, but it slows everything down and can be really frustrating when you’re trying to work.
On the other hand when your friends send you emails warning you not to open emails with certain subjects or from particular people, before you hit your contact list, type ‘Virus hoax’ into Google. If you check whether the message is genuine – you won’t waste the time of all the people on your contact list – which is what this message aims to do; a virus in itself.