What is Antivirus?

Since I've been looking around at all different aspects of security and safety online; I decided to check out something that we all have, but probably don't know much about. Antivirus software is something we all have on our computers and something that we know we require to stay safe. If you're anything like me you trust that it does it's job and keeps you safe on your travels through cyberspace. After looking deeper into what antivirus software actually does, I thought you all might like to see what I found at http://www.ehow.com/about_5086907_antivirus-software.html . Here is where I learned that a virus is a code that enters your files and plants very specific patterns of code into them. Once the virus is in your files it has access to do whatever it was designed to do. Some viruses are designed to gather data from files, some have memory, and some will record keystrokes to relay passwords back to hackers. Antivirus software runs a scan either automatically or manually and identifies oddities within the code of your files. Once identified, most antivirus softwares will quarantine the virus into an empty file and altert the user to delete it. Now that you know the basics of how antivirus works maybe you'll up that subscription or run that scan a little more often