Trading for Money

Many people who have a computer and access to the Internet don’t even know what a trojan horse virus is. Sadly, there are even others who seem to assume the trojan and spyware and viruses are the same and this is a misconception.

A trojan is a bad type of program that is attached to a useful program that can be downloaded from the Internet. I am not saying all programs on the Internet are dangerous, but some are. When you run the downloaded program the trojan quietly installs itself on your computer.

Often trojans are disguised as helpful programs that will scan and remove adware or malware from your computer. The unsuspecting computer user thinks that clicking on a graphic link that says their computer is infected and this ‘tool’ on the website will clean up their computer. Unfortunately, they are misled and the tool that got downloaded just installed a trojan whose payload may cause all sorts of havoc. I have even heard of video player codecs having a trojan horse virus attached to it.

What can trojans do? They can carry just about any kind of destructive payload. They can crash your computer, collect personal information and send it to a specially set up web site in another country. However, the most sinister thing they can do is install what is called a key logger. A key logger records every key press and mouse movement. Do you use your computer for online banking?