A Trojan horse is a small program that will install a malicious program on your computer. It will be disguised as something else to help trick a computer user into loading it. Sometimes a Trojan horse will appear to be a useful program or application but can be very harmful to your computer once it is executed.
There are two different types of a Trojan horse. The first one is useful software that has been modified by someone to include a malicious code that will run on your computer while you are running the other software. The other type is a program that has been disguised as something else such as a picture or game in an attempt to trick a computer user into running the file.
There are a few guidelines that should be followed so that you can protect yourself from the many Trojan horses that are out on the internet. Trojan horses are most commonly send through email systems so if you receive an email from someone that you do not know, do not open any attachments that are included in the email unless you can confirm the source of them first. Sometimes you may even receive a Trojan horse from someone you know as hackers are able to steal address books from time to time. If the email you have received from a friend does not make sense, then do not open any files attached to it.
When you are initially setting up your email application, be sure that you do not allow it to open attachments automatically. This would cause a Trojan horse to be executed before you can do anything about it. Some email applications have the ability to scan attachments before opening them. These would be preferable to one that does not.
Perhaps the most important thing that you can do to protect yourself from Trojan horses and Viruses alike is to be sure that you have an up to date anti-virus program running on your computer. If the anti-virus application has a setting for automatic updates, be sure to turn them on so that you do not have to worry about forgetting to update your definition files.
Finally, be sure that you are installing any operating system patches that are provided to correct security loop-holes and avoid using any peer to peer applications. Also, if you are still concerned about getting a Trojan horse, you can download and install an anti-Trojan program that can be found for free on the internet
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