Many people think that viruses arrive via email, but today just as many viruses are hidden and ready to pounce on websites that you visit.

Malicious software can be easily hidden in advertisements on even the most respected sites – even the London Stock Exchange has suffered from this (http://www.highseverity.com/2011/02/london-stock-exchange-hit-by-malware.html).

Good spam filters will catch most of the junk mail with dodgy links, but without a robust virus protection system you can be caught out.  Sometimes malware can be simply an annoying inconvenience, but sometimes it can be downright destructive and start causing all kinds of hassle on your computer.

Even with a comprehensive back up system that doesn’t mean that losing a day’s work isn’t a major pain in the neck.

Check out your own virus protection – a good one will flag up a warning when you visit a site that has a threat on it.  Google often shows you a ‘known malware’ warning when you use a Google list to attempt to load a website that has ‘nasties’ on it.