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Computer Viruses – Timeline and Evolution
 
This is a brief compilation of information about the history of viruses over the years, to provide information on an often-confusing subject. 
 

1949

• Theories for self-replicating programs are first developed.

1971

• The Creeper virus, an experimental self-replicating program, is written by Bob Thomas at BBN. Creeper infected DEC PDP-10 computers running the TENEX operating system. Creeper gained access via the ARPANET and copied itself to the remote system where the message, "I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!" was displayed. The Reaper program was later created to delete Creeper.

1974

• The Wabbit virus, more a fork bomb than a virus, is written. The Wabbit virus made multiple copies of itself on a single computer (and was named "Wabbit" for the speed at which it did so) until it clogs the system, reducing system performance, before finally reaching a threshold and crashing the computer.

1974/1975

• ANIMAL is written by John Walker for the UNIVAC 1108. Animal asked a number of questions to the user in an attempt to guess the type of animal that the user was thinking of, while the related program PERVADE would create a copy of itself and ANIMAL in every directory to which the current user had access. It spread across the multi-user UNIVACs when users with overlapping permissions discovered the game, and to other computers when tapes were shared. The program was carefully written to avoid damage to existing file or directory structure, and to not copy itself if permissions did not exist or if damage could result. Its spread was therefore halted by an OS upgrade which changed the format of the file status tables that PERVADE used for safe copying. Though non-malicious, "Pervading Animal" represents the first Trojan "in the wild".

1980

• Jürgen Kraus wrote his master thesis "Selbstreproduktion bei Programmen" (self-reproduction of programs).

1981

• A program called Elk Cloner, written for Apple II systems and created by Richard Skrenta. Apple II was seen as particularly vulnerable due to the storage of its operating system on floppy disk. Elk Cloner's design combined with public ignorance about what malware was and how to protect against it led to Elk Cloner being responsible for the first large-scale computer virus outbreak in history.
• Apple Viruses 1, 2, and 3 are some of the first viruses “in the wild,” or in the public domain. Found on the Apple II operating system, the viruses spread through Texas A&M via pirated computer games.

1983

• The term 'virus' is coined by Frederick Cohen in describing self-replicating computer programs. In 1984 Cohen uses the phrase "computer virus" – as suggested by his teacher Leonard Adleman – to describe the operation of such programs in terms of "infection". He defines a 'virus' as "a program that can 'infect' other programs by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy of itself."[citation needed]
• November 10, 1983, at Lehigh University, Cohen demonstrates a virus-like program on a VAX11/750 system. The program was able to install itself to, or infect, other system objects.

1984

• Ken Thompson publishes "Reflections on Trusting Trust", a theoretical paper which describes how a virus can be inserted into a program's object code, when the virus itself cannot be found in the source code.

1986

• January: The Brain boot sector virus (aka Pakistani flu) is released. Brain is considered the first IBM PC compatible virus, and the program responsible for the first IBM PC compatible virus epidemic. The virus is also known as Lahore, Pakistani, Pakistani Brain, as it was created in Lahore, Pakistan by 19 year old Pakistani programmer, Basit Farooq Alvi, and his brother, Amjad Farooq Alvi.
• December 1986: Ralf Burger presented the Virdem model of programs at a meeting of the underground Chaos Computer Club in Germany. The Virdem model represented the first programs that could replicate themselves via addition of their code to executable DOS files in COM format.

1987

• Appearance of the Vienna virus, which was subsequently neutralized—the first time this had happened on the IBM platform.
• The Lehigh virus, one of the first file viruses, infects command.com files.
• Appearance of Lehigh virus, boot sector viruses such as Yale from USA, Stoned from New Zealand, Ping Pong from Italy, and appearance of first self-encrypting file virus, Cascade. Lehigh was stopped on campus before it spread to the wild, and has never been found elsewhere as a result. A subsequent infection of Cascade in the offices of IBM Belgium led to IBM responding with its own antivirus product development. Prior to this, antivirus solutions developed at IBM were intended for staff use only.
• October: The Jerusalem virus, part of the (at that time unknown) Suriv family, is detected in the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem destroys all executable files on infected machines upon every occurrence of Friday the 13th (except Friday 13 November 1987 making its first trigger date May 13, 1988). Jerusalem caused a worldwide epidemic in 1988.
• November: The SCA virus, a boot sector virus for Amigas appears, immediately creating a pandemic virus-writer storm. A short time later, SCA releases another, considerably more destructive virus, the Byte Bandit.
• December: Christmas Tree EXEC was the first widely disruptive replicating network program, which paralysed several international computer networks in December 1987.

1988

• June: The Festering Hate Apple ProDOS virus spreads from underground pirate BBS systems and starts infecting mainstream networks.
• November 2: The Morris worm, created by Robert Tappan Morris, infects DEC VAX and Sun machines running BSD UNIX connected to the Internet, and becomes the first worm to spread extensively "in the wild", and one of the first well-known programs exploiting buffer overrun vulnerabilities.

1989

• October 1989: Ghostball, the first multipartite virus, is discovered by Friðrik Skúlason.

1990

• Mark Washburn working on an analysis of the Vienna and Cascade viruses with Ralf Burger develops the first family of polymorphic virus: the Chameleon family. Chameleon series debuted with the release of 1260.
• Symantec launches Norton AntiVirus, one of the first antivirus programs developed by a large company.

1991

• Tequila is the first widespread polymorphic virus found in the wild. Polymorphic viruses make detection difficult for virus scanners by changing their appearance with each new infection

1992

• Michelangelo was expected to create a digital apocalypse on March 6, with millions of computers having their information wiped according to mass media hysteria surrounding the virus. Later assessments of the damage showed the aftermath to be minimal.

1993

• "Leandro & Kelly" and "Freddy Krueger" spread quickly due to popularity of BBS and shareware distribution.
• 1300 viruses are in existence, an increase of 420% from December of 1990.
• The Dark Avenger Mutation Engine (DAME) is created. It is a toolkit that turns ordinary viruses into polymorphic viruses. The Virus Creation Laboratory (VCL) is also made available. It is the first actual virus creation kit.

1995

• The first Macro virus, called "Concept," is created. It attacked Microsoft Word documents.

1996

• "Ply" - DOS 16-bit based complicated polymorphic virus appeared with built-in permutation engine.
• Baza, Laroux (a macro virus), and Staog viruses are the first to infect Windows95 files, Excel, and Linux respectively.

 
1998

• June 2: The first version of the CIH virus appears.
• Currently harmless and yet to be found in the wild, StrangeBrew is the first virus to infect Java files. The virus modifies CLASS files to contain a copy of itself within the middle of the file's code and to begin execution from the virus section.
• The Chernobyl virus spreads quickly via .exe files. As the notoriety attached to its name would suggest, the virus is quite destructive, attacking not only files but also a certain chip within infected computers.
• Two California teenagers infiltrate and take control of more than 500 military, government, and private sector computer systems.

1999

• Jan 20: The Happy99 worm invisibly attached itself to emails. Displayed fireworks to hide changes being made and wished you a happy new year. Modified system files related to Outlook Express and Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows 95 and Windows 98.
• March 26: The Melissa worm is released, targeting Microsoft Word and Outlook-based systems, and creating considerable network traffic.  The Melissa virus, W97M/Melissa, executes a macro in a document attached to an email, which forwards the document to 50 people in the user's Outlook address book. The virus also infects other Word documents and subsequently mails them out as attachments. Melissa spread faster than any previous virus, infecting an estimated 1 million PCs.
• June 6: The ExploreZip worm, which destroys Microsoft Office documents, is first detected.
• December 16: Sub7, or SubSeven, is the name of a popular backdoor program. It is mainly used for causing mischief, such as hiding the computer cursor, changing system settings or loading up pornographic websites. However, it can also be used for more serious criminal applications, such as stealing credit card details with a keystroke logger.
• Bubble Boy is the first worm that does not depend on the recipient opening an attachment in order for infection to occur. As soon as the user opens the email, Bubble Boy sets to work.
• Tristate is the first multi-program macro virus; it infects Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

2000

• May: The ILOVEYOU worm appears. As of 2004[update] this was the most costly virus to businesses, causing upwards of 5.5 to 10 billion dollars in damage. The backdoor trojan to the worm, Barok, was created by Filipino programmer Onel de Guzman; it is not known who created the attack vector or who (inadvertently?) unleashed it; de Guzman himself denies being behind the outbreak although he suggests he may have been duped by someone using his own Barok code as a payload.
• W97M.Resume.A, a new variation of the Melissa virus, is determined to be in the wild. The “resume” virus acts much like Melissa, using a Word macro to infect Outlook and spread itself.
• The “Stages” virus, disguised as a joke email about the stages of life, spreads across the Internet. Unlike most previous viruses, Stages is hidden in an attachment with a false “.txt” extension, making it easier to lure recipients into opening it. Until now, it has generally been safe to assume that text files are safe.
• “Distributed denial-of-service” attacks by hackers knock Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, and other high profile web sites offline for several hours.

2001

• February 11: The Anna Kournikova virus hits e-mail servers hard by sending e-mail to contacts in the Microsoft Outlook addressbook.[13] The creator of it, a Dutchman so-called OnTheFly, has been sentenced to 150 hours of community service.  The “Anna Kournikova” virus, which mails itself to persons listed in the victim's Microsoft Outlook address book, worries analysts who believe the relatively harmless virus was written with a “tool kit” that would allow even the most inexperienced programmers to create viruses
• May 8: The Sadmind worm spreads by exploiting holes in both Sun Solaris and Microsoft IIS.
• July: The Sircam worm is released, spreading through Microsoft systems via e-mail and unprotected network shares.  Sircam spreads personal documents over the Internet through email. CodeRed attacks vulnerable webpages, and was expected to eventually reroute its attack to the White House homepage. It infected approximately 359,000 hosts in the first twelve hours.
• July 13: The Code Red worm attacking the Index Server ISAPI Extension in Microsoft Internet Information Services is released.
• August 4: A complete re-write of the Code Red worm, Code Red II begins aggressively spreading onto Microsoft systems, primarily in China.
• September 18: The Nimda worm is discovered and spreads through a variety of means including vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and backdoors left by Code Red II and Sadmind worm.
• October 26: The Klez worm is first identified.
• Shortly after the September 11th attacks, the Nimda virus infects hundreds of thousands of computers in the world. The virus is one of the most sophisticated to date with as many as five different methods of replicating and infecting systems.. Worms increase in prevalence with Sircam, CodeRed, and BadTrans creating the most problems. BadTrans is designed to capture passwords and credit card information.

2002

• Beast is a windows based backdoor trojan horse, more commonly known in the underground cracker community as a RAT (Remote Administration Tool). It is capable of infecting almost all Windows OS i.e. 95 through XP. Written in Delphi and Released first by its author Tataye in 2002, its most current version was released October 3, 2004
• August 30: Optix Pro is a configurable remote access tool or Trojan, similar to SubSeven or BO2K.
• Author of the Melissa virus, David L. Smith, is sentenced to 20 months in federal prison. The LFM-926 virus appears in early January, displaying the message “Loading.Flash.Movie” as it infects Shockwave Flash (.swf) files.
• Celebrity named viruses continue with the “Shakira,” “Britney Spears,” and “Jennifer Lopez” viruses emerging.
• The Klez worm, an example of the increasing trend of worms that spread through email, overwrites files (its payload fills files with zeroes), creates hidden copies of the originals, and attempts to disable common anti-virus products.
• The Bugbear worm also makes it first appearance in September. It is a complex worm with many methods of infecting systems.

2003

• April 2: Graybird is a Trojan also known as Backdoor.Graybird.
• June 13: ProRat is a Turkish-made Microsoft Windows based backdoor trojan horse, more commonly known as a RAT (Remote Administration Tool).
• August 12: The Blaster worm, aka the Lovesan worm, rapidly spreads by exploiting a vulnerability in system services present on Windows computers.
• August 18: The Welchia (Nachi) worm is discovered. The worm tries to remove the blaster worm and patch Windows.
• August 19: The Sobig worm (technically the Sobig.F worm) spreads rapidly through Microsoft systems via mail and network shares.
• October 24: The Sober worm is first seen on Microsoft systems and maintains its presence until 2005 with many new variants. The simultaneous attacks on network weakpoints by the Blaster and Sobig worms cause massive amounts of damage.
• January 24: The SQL slammer worm, aka Sapphire worm, Helkern and other names, attacks vulnerabilities in Microsoft SQL Server and MSDE and causes widespread problems on the Internet. The relatively benign “Slammer” (Sapphire) worm becomes the fastest spreading worm to date, infecting 75,000 computers in approximately ten minutes, doubling its numbers every 8.5 seconds in its first minute of infection. The Sobig worm becomes the one of the first to join the spam community. Infected computer systems have the potential to become spam relay points and spamming techniques are used to mass-mail copies of the worm to potential victims.

2004

• Late January: MyDoom emerges, and currently holds the record for the fastest-spreading mass mailer worm.  MyDoom or Novarg, spreads through emails and file-sharing software faster than any previous virus or worm. MyDoom entices email recipients to open an attachment that allows hackers to access the hard drive of the infected computer. The intended goal is a “denial of service attack” on the SCO Group, a company that is suing various groups for using an open-source version of its Unix programming language. SCO offers a $250,000 reward to anyone giving information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the people who wrote the worm.
• March 19: The Witty worm is a record-breaking worm in many regards. It exploited holes in several Internet Security Systems (ISS) products. It was the fastest disclosure to worm, it was the first internet worm to carry a destructive payload and it spread rapidly using a pre-populated list of ground-zero hosts.
• May 1: The Sasser worm emerges by exploiting a vulnerability in LSASS and causes problems in networks, while removing MyDoom and Bagle variants, even interrupting business. An estimated one million computers running Windows are affected by the fast-spreading Sasser computer worm. Victims include businesses, such as British Airways, banks, and government offices, including Britain's Coast Guard. The worm does not cause irreparable harm to computers or data, but it does slow computers and cause some to quit or reboot without explanation. The Sasser worm is different than other viruses in that users do not have to open a file attachment to be affected by it. Instead, the worm seeks out computers with a security flaw and then sabotages them. An 18-year-old German high school student confessed to creating the worm. He's suspected of releasing another version of the virus.
• August 16: Nuclear RAT (short for Nuclear Remote Administration Tool) is a backdoor Trojan Horse that infects Windows NT family systems (Windows 2000, XP, 2003).
• August 20: Vundo, or the Vundo Trojan (also known as Virtumonde or Virtumondo and sometimes referred to as MS Juan) is a Trojan Horse that is known to cause popups and advertising for rogue antispyware programs, and sporadically other misbehavior including performance degradation and denial of service with some websites including Google and Facebook.
• October 12, 2004: Bifrost, also known as Bifrose, is a backdoor trojan which can infect Windows 95 through Vista. Bifrost uses the typical server, server builder, and client backdoor program configuration to allow a remote attack.
• December: Santy, the first known "webworm" is launched. It exploited a vulnerability in phpBB and used Google in order to find new targets. It infected around 40000 sites before Google filtered the search query used by the worm, preventing it from spreading.

2005

• October 13: The Samy XSS worm becomes the fastest spreading virus by some definitions as of 2006[update].
• Late 2005: The Zlob Trojan, also known as Trojan.Zlob, is a trojan horse which masquerades as a required video codec in the form of ActiveX. It was first detected in late 2005.
• 2005: Bandook or Bandook Rat (Bandook Remote Administration Tool) is a backdoor trojan horse that infects the Windows family. It uses a server creator, a client and a server to take control over the remote computer. It uses process hijacking / Kernel Patching to bypass the firewall, and allow the server component to hijack processes and gain rights for accessing the Internet.
• March saw the world's first cell phone virus: Commwarrior-A. The virus probably originated in Russia, and it spread via text message. In the final analysis, Commwarrior-A only infected 60 phones, but it raised the specter of many more—and more effective—cell phone viruses.

2006

• January 20: The Nyxem worm was discovered. It spread by mass-mailing. Its payload, which activates on the third of every month, starting on February 3, attempts to disable security-related and file sharing software, and destroy files of certain types, such as Microsoft Office files.
• February 16: discovery of the first-ever malware for Mac OS X, a low-threat trojan-horse known as OSX/Leap-A or OSX/Oompa-A, is announced.
• Late September: Stration or Warezov worm first discovered.

2007

• January 17: Storm Worm identified as a fast spreading email spamming threat to Microsoft systems. It begins gathering infected computers into the Storm botnet. By around June 30 it had infected 1.7 million computers, comprised between 1 and 10 million computers by September. Thought to have originated from Russia, it disguises itself as a news email containing a film about bogus news stories asking you to download the attachment which it claims is a film.

2008

• February 17: Mocmex is a trojan, which was found in a digital photo frame in February 2008. It was the first serious computer virus on a digital photo frame. The virus was traced back to a group in China.
• March 3: Torpig, also known as Sinowal and Mebroot, is a Trojan horse which affects Windows, turning off anti-virus applications. It allows others to access the computer, modifies data, steals confidential information (such as user passwords and other sensitive data) and installs more malware on the victim's computer.
• May 6: Rustock.C, a hitherto-rumoured spambot-type malware with advanced rootkit capabilities, was announced to have been detected on Microsoft systems and analyzed, having been in the wild and undetected since October 2007 at the very least.
• July 6: Bohmini.A is a configurable remote access tool or trojan that exploits security flaws in Adobe Flash 9.0.115 with Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox 2.0 under Windows XP SP2.
• July 31: The Koobface computer worm targets users of Facebook and Myspace.
• November 21: Computer worm Conficker infects anywhere from 9 to 15 million Microsoft server systems running everything from Windows 2000 to the Windows 7 Beta. The French Navy, UK Ministry of Defence (including Royal Navy warships and submarines), Sheffield Hospital network, German Bundeswehr and Norwegian Police were all affected. Microsoft sets a bounty of $250,000 USD for information leading to the capture of the worm's author(s).. Five main variants of the Conficker worm are known and have been dubbed Conficker A, B, C, D and E. They were discovered 21 November 2008, 29 December 2008, 20 February 2009, 4 March 2009 and 7 April 2009, respectively.

2009

• July 4: The July 2009 cyber attacks occur and the emergence of the W32.Dozor attack the United States and South Korea.

2010

• February 18: Microsoft announced that a BSoD problem on some windows machines which was triggered by a batch of Patch Tuesday updates was caused by the Alureon Trojan.

If you have already incurred costs to repair your PC as a result of this issue, we're committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses," McAfee said on its Web site.

Theres a new botnet virus infecting financial and social websites. Are you protected read more about the botnet virus and contact Junction PC for ways to prevent this from affecting your  computer network.  To read more about this click on the link below.
Virus News

When people go out to buy a new computer, they have to make all kinds of choices. They have to decide the issue of Windows versus Mac, how powerful a computer they need, what features they require and what they can do without. One thing that people do not think about enough, however, is the computer hardware manufacturer. Whether you are buying a PC used, new, or refurbished, the computer manufacturer is crucial. Having a well manufactured computer doesn't just mean that things will run more smoothly, it also means that your computer will work for longer and have less of a chance of a catastrophic crash.

The difficult thing is that computer manufacturers license parts from many different places. They may have one computer case manufacturer, another company making the motherboards, and a third one providing the memory sticks. The best thing to do is to read consumer reports about the computer manufacturers, and make your decision about what is the best purchase for you. Dell is a reputable computer manufacturer, as is IBM. One computer manufacturer that you should avoid at all costs, however, is Compaq. I bought a Compaq Computer, and I was very disappointed with it. It broke down all of the time, and when I would try to change the hardware, the case was so small that I couldn't get in there without cutting my fingers up.

Of course, one option that is always available is to get a custom built computer. The problem is that Every custom computer manufacturer is different. Some of them use high quality parts, but other ones use the cheapest gear available. The good thing about getting a custom built desktop computer is that you can ask the computer manufacturer what components are included. They will tell you everything that goes into the PC, and then you can look up those individual companies.

In addition, buying from a small computer manufacture means that you will have more access to one on one computer help. A lot of these custom computer stores are designed to sell to people in the neighborhood, and they will actually come to your house if you have any problems. As long as you do not buy your computer from an auction, you can probably find out where the parts are from and make sure that you are getting a good quality product. Just remember, do your research!
 

I am often amazed at the number of spam e-mails that I see in my inbox everyday. Though most of it is harmless a lot of it can be dangerous if you don't know what you're looking for. A longtime customer of Junction PC told us that the other day my husband told me a friend of his was a victim of computer crime. He was looking for a quick loan of $5,000 and he ended up with an empty bank account. This happens to a lot of people, and it's not because they're stupid, it's mostly because they need money and it seems that someone is offering it to them for little or nothing.

Though some computer crime comes in the form of embezzlement most of it comes in your e-mail box. You may get an offer for a payday loan or you may have been informed that she won the lottery. My husband's friend found an e-mail in his inbox telling him he could get a $5,000 loan within a matter of days. Because he needed money badly he clicked on the link and apply for the loan. What he didn't know was that he was about to be the victim of computer crime.

This type of computer crime is very common. When the company contacted him they told him that he had to give them close to $900 in order to secure the loan. When he didn't hear back from them, he called their phone number and spoke to a woman who said he needed to send even more money. This is very common with computer crime. If they think you are not wise to their scheme they will try to get even more money out of you. When the money still didn't come through my husband's friend called again. This time the phone was disconnected and the company, along with his money, was long gone.

There are also other types of computer crime you have to be aware of what you are surfing the net. If you get an e-mail that says you have won a lottery delete it immediately. If you get an e-mail that says you must enter your password for Paypal, or one that asks you to enter your information at your banking web site, you must also delete the e-mail. These are both common computer crime frauds that try to get your information so they may clean out your bank account or use your identity to get credit. Remember, if an offer sounds too good to be true it probably is. If in doubt call or write to us at info@junctionpc.com

The other day a longtime customer came into our Junction PCstore in Doylestown, PA, he spoke to our sales manager and stated:
 "I was looking through the classifieds section of the newspaper for some affordable laptops and I was shocked by how much the prices have dropped in recent times! I mean, just over a year ago, when I decided to go out shopping for a laptop, it cost me an arm and a leg. So much so that I abandoned all hope of ever finding affordable laptops (from a good brand that is) and began using the trusty old desktop at home.
But the latest news was an eye opener of sorts for me. I had never before seen such a wide range of affordable laptops ever before. But of late, the dynamics of big businesses had resulted in affordable laptops. I don't exaggerate. If you don't believe me, compare the process of laptops a couple of years ago with the laptops after the emergence and consolidation of companies like Dell.

 
By eliminating the middlemen and rationalizing storage costs, they have brought about a revolution in affordable laptops. Which is why, a basic laptop that cost upwards of a thousand dollars a couple of years ago is now available for well below the magical thousand dollar mark."

 
Our Sales Manager Nick informed him that of course the rise of affordable laptops also has a lot to do with the falling of various computer part prices. Hard disks are a lot cheaper than ever before as is memory. RAM is much more rational and today, for an earlier price that could get you barely 256 Mb of processing speed, you can get 1Gb or more. All of these have had a role to play in making affordable laptops a reality. But if there is any one thing that has contributed the most to affordable laptops (in my estimation of course) it would be the revolution that has taken the modern enterprise by storm.

 
Once our longtime customer heard these good news from Nick, our very helpful sales manager, he went on: "I am referring to the concept of mobile offices. Ever since large scale enterprises realized that fixed costs like infrastructure and rents have been spiraling upwards with no downturn in sight, they have been exploring ways in which to reduce the dependency on these costs. The first trend that emerged was flexible hours. But nowadays, telecommuting is the norm. And rather than look at the company for the provision of a laptop, most individuals prefer to have one well within reach to give them the kind of mobility that they seek. And this is why affordable laptops have become my reality",  our satisfied  longtime customer said to Nick Merlino

It can be extremely frustrating to be in the middle of a program and suddenly the entire program freeze up. It may be that your computer is running slower than normal. You may need to consider that your computer has spyware somewhere in the file directories. Many websites and downloads attach computer spyware programs to monitor your activities. Some are not malicious and simply want to customize pop-up ads to your individual browsing history. Nick Merlino of Junction PC informed this staff writer from Swissdomain Registration.com that there are spyware programs that can cause huge system errors and access vital information that you store on your computer.  Nick says: Do not put up with it any longer. You need an adequate computer spyware program to help combat those nasty attachments and bugs. Click here for more information:

Spyware is a huge pain in the derriere. It can slow down the speed of your computer. It can cause annoying pop-up ads to appear on your screen. It can even allow strangers access to sensitive personal information on your computer. There are computer spyware programs and software packages to help keep your computer running at its best. Expensive does not always mean better and it never hurts to do a bit of research before making a purchase. Start your research here:

For as long as there have been computers and the internet, there have been unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of the innocence of others. Many of the games that are free to download do come with a price. Computer spyware is often attached to the files and you, unknowingly, allow them access to your computer. Stop putting up with that kind of garbage! There is software that can stop spies from monitoring your activities. Stop them now by clicking here:

Spyware is the bane of the computer industry. Spyware causes more computer malfunctions than any other problem. It can slow down the processing speed and can jeopardize your financial security. People gain access to your computer through computer spyware programs. You may have downloaded a song, movie or game and unwittingly gave another individual access to your computer. If you want more information about how spyware works and what you can do to stop people from accessing your computer systems, click here:

In an ideal world no one would interfere in your personal business. But life is not ideal nor is it fair. There are companies who make their profits by accessing personal computers for information. Some are seemingly harmless and only want to monitor the websites you visit. Others are not so nice and try to hack into your personal information for less than desirable reasons. Sometimes it can feel hopeless but you can take the first step in preventing unwanted software on your computer. If you want more information on protecting your computer, click here: info@junctionpc.com and ask for Nick Merlino.

Local Security is Crucial to Internet Use.
The Internet has become a critical tool in education and entertainment, as well as communications – business and personal. With the internet and the ability to share information comes great risk; exposure to malicious software that steals your information and damages your computer system. This malicious software (MALWARE for short) is categorized as Adware, Spyware, and Viruses.
E-mail as an Infection Route
"Forward this to everyone in your address book" is a common phrase in chain mail over the internet. Well – many malicious types of software will do this for you, without your knowledge or consent. Persons receiving a file from a friend or colleague may promptly open it without considering the circumstances. This is the intent from the programmer of these particular malicious softwares (often called worms); they will masquerade the dangerous attachment to be a funny video, pictures, or some other file from a friend or colleague. Best Practice: Do not open an attachment or link from an e-mail that you were not expecting – even if you know the person that sent it.
Surfing the Web
Malicious websites take advantage of scripting features and security errors within common internet browsers and operating systems. Dialogue boxes may appear on your computer warning of detected conditions, intending to scare you, and suggesting you install their software to repair the issue. Other sites require you to install their "driver" to view the content, like videos or pictures. In both these cases, by clicking OK or YES you are expressly allowing these sites to install their potentially malicious software on your computer, regardless of any protective software installed on your computer. Best Practice: Do not install applications or drivers from web-sites that are not trusted.
Internet File Sharing
Ares, Bearshare, BitTorrent, Frostwire, Limewire, mIRC, and Morpheus are common internet-based file sharing applications. The applications themselves are not malicious software; however their functionality does provide a substantial path for intrusion. Internet File Sharing allows files to be shared with other people around the world; be it documents, videos, music, applications, or viruses. The tools for sharing do not discriminate or understand the difference between a safe file and something malicious. Malware is frequently made available masquerading as your favorite song or program. Best Practice: Do not use this type of internet file sharing.
 

"Do you need ThemeZoom?" is how one of the reviewer starts his blog enumerating this unsurpassed Search Engine Optimization, Keyword/Key Phrase, Market Intelligence and Education System? The reviewer rhetorically answers:" Probably not". And we concur with him. ThemeZoom Extreme just now released to its professional SEO user in Beta form is unsurpassed in covering of all latent semantic indexing, marketing intelligence gathering and keyword and phrase research.
Even the best other professionally available Keyword and other SEO tools can scratch the surface of this product. According to one of the founders of ThemZoom, Russell Wright, who suggests to compare just the keyword and phrase intelligence gathering capability of TZX alone, with other professional keyword search software programs you will see  a tremendous difference in the results, we will go in more detail a little bit later in this article. Russell suggests further to imagine a humongous Iceberg floating in the ocean. As you probably know most of the icebergs mass is not visible to the onlooker because it's under water. Well the comparison of most professional keyword intelligence gathering software are not even reaching the ocean water level; whereas TZX provides Junction PCs SEOs  to dig all the way down to the larger invisble to the human eye depths of the latent semantic indexing keyword wealth of the iceberg.   
 The monthly investment is rather high and in the wrong hands can act like the razor in a monkey's hand, dangerous. You as a astute business entrepreneur can engage one of our Junction PC Theme Zoom certified SEOs and direct us to "swallow your market segment whole".  But, this means you have to convey to us that you are serious about dominating your market both on and off line. Junction PC s system TZX, is the service if you want to be first in your market segment.
TZX's Russell Wright the cofounder is committed to providing a superior market research product to Junction PC, here in Doylestown Pa 18901. According to our senior TZX SEO who has been beta testing the latest beta release: "This tool effectively renders keyword research tools  very inefficient to obsolete and elevates keyword research combined with in dept market intelligence data into the top level of your market segment. Contrary to other research databases software and research systems,
ThemeZoom gains its true intelligence "LIVE" directly from the Internet. The sifting and digging through a unwieldy keywords/keyphrases list that because  of the slow gathering process of these other keyword search programs deliver 30 - 90 days old (or older) intelligence. According to a close associate of Russell, Charles Hefflin from SEO2020 the use of ThemeZoom Extreme will quickly demonstrate how keywords relate to each other by using an element, the results of one of Google's latest filed patent about Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). This element of relationship between keywords is the Latent Semantic Indexing framework and branded as the "Co-occurrence Matrix".
Hefflin continuous then ... "in case you are looking at keyword density analysis and KEI" as one of the leading other SEO/blueprint research tool just released this March 2008  produces "then you are missing out on top 3 rankings in the search engines" and we whole hardily agree with him here at Junction PC.