Why do we need an Antivirus software for our PCs?

Computers are very common these days and you would hardly be able to do your work without computers. Whether you are a student or a working professional, you would definitely require a computer to complete your assignments or manage your day to day tasks. But today, there are a lot of threats everywhere which would infect your computer and it could cause a serious problem, like data loss and OS corruptions, etc. Imagine you are a very busy businessman and you have several important meetings and appointments scheduled in Outlook and suddenly one day, all your appointments are deleted from Outlook and all your emails are gone. That would definitely be a nightmare! Just a single virus program can do this to you and you would be helpless once the damage is done. This is why we should always keep our PCs protected with any good antivirus software. Following are a few more points to explain why antivirus programs are required for our computers:

1. Keep your computer free from adware

You might have seen in some computers that after launching the web browser, some strange pop-ups start opening automatically which show ads related to random downloads, dating, and some adult stuff, etc. These are actually generated by adware which infects the web browser and installs unwanted extensions in your browser and changes the default search engine to any malicious webpage. The default Windows Defender antivirus can’t stop these adware and that’s why we need any other good antivirus program installed in our machine to protect it from adware.

2. Keep your data safe

Hackers can easily install ransomware in your machine and encrypt all your data. The recent wannacry attack was the best example of it. The ransomware changes the extension of all your files and locks the computer with a message on the screen which asks you to pay money to the attacker through cryptocurrency. There is no assurance that your files will be back again even after paying the amount. Suppose you become a victim of this type of attack and lose all your data, doesn’t it sound horrible? This is another reason why do we need to install a good antivirus software with ransomware protection enabled. Not only this kind of attack takes place on the internet. For ransomware to take over your PC, you have to download it first and open the file that contains it. As many may not know, there's a huge importance of security of the browser itself and the protections that each website that we visit has. There are many different online businesses that fall under heavy attacks of hackers. There are clear statistics that show a steady increase in the number of attacks. Among the targets you will find: E-commerce sites, Banks, Pharmacies, private companies, online casinos and many more. The user MUST first check the website. Some of the checks are user reviews, SSL, payment methods and more. Casinos are often a target if they are not secured correctly. The casino might do everything right, but if it has a lack of security, the transactions that are made may be exposed to third parties. A very popular game is online pokies, which gained popularity thanks to its low stacks and fast gameplay. That's why users are often doing many transactions that include deposits and withdraws. Some of these might be "sniped" by a third party and both the user and the casino will lose the money. That is why it's very important to check the website background, the same as you would do in a regular restaurant or business.

3. Avoid system slowdowns

Several malware run in the computer as background processes which impacts the performance of your machine. The RAM and Processor are utilized a lot by these malware which causes system slowdowns and system crashes. These malware gets linked with the important system processes and it becomes almost impossible to remove them from PC once they infect the machine. So to avoid these malware from getting installed in the machine, a good antivirus software is required to be installed on the computer.

4. Prevent automatic restarts and blue screen of death errors

Some viruses create several unwanted shortcuts in the machine and they come back automatically even if you delete those shortcuts. If you click on these shortcuts, either they create more copies of them or they restart the machine and sometimes it results in a blue screen of death error. It becomes really frustrating to distinguish between the original shortcut icon and the malware. So, these viruses fill your hard drive with multiple junk files and slow down the machine which impacts your productivity. This is also a good reason we need a good antivirus to prevent these viruses from getting installed in the machine.

5. Prevent keyloggers and screen capturing malware

This is a very serious issue which you could face if you don’t have any good antivirus installed on your machine. If any keylogger gets installed in your machine through any malicious email or through any infected USB drive, whatever you do in your computer would get recorded and would be sent automatically to the attacker. If any keylogger is installed in the machine, it would secretly capture the keystrokes and screenshots and would send them to the attacker remotely. All your user IDs, passwords, screenshots of your online activities and everything you do would be sent to the attacker which would compromise your privacy and would put you in a serious risk. The attacker would be able to login to your bank websites, he would have your card details etc which can be misused. This kind of data is already being sold by hackers on the dark web. So, it is always smart to keep a good antivirus installed on your machine to avoid these kinds of problems.

So, the overall idea of this article is, that if you want to be safe online and offline, you MUST use a good antivirus in your PC. Without any antivirus, you are prone to cyber-attacks and once you become a victim of it, there would be very fewer chances to recover from it. So, I would recommend using any of these antiviruses as your primary antivirus: AVG Internet Security, Quick Heal Antivirus, Norton Security, Kaspersky Internet Security, and McAfee Total Protection.