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With the recent Anna Kournikova virus (which this reporter received twice) and the new "Naked Wife" virus, there have been a lot of questions about bugs and viruses, what they mean and how we can prevent them.

The word bug refers to any problem with a computer program. Its derivation is not, as many people assume, a comparison to health problems in humans. It actually comes from a time in the 1950s when the US military were baffled as to what was wrong with one of their enormous mainframe computers. No amount of checking revealed anything until, finally, after stripping the machine down, they discovered that a bug had chewed through one of the wires, short-circuiting the whole thing.

A virus in computer terms, though, is named for how it spreads: similar to how a virus in humans or animals would. A computer virus is a program, often hidden in another program such as email. If, for instance, you opened the attachment in last year's "I Love You" virus, it would have forwarded itself automatically to everyone in your address book. Because you are also in the receiver's address book you would then get it back again many times over. This caused havoc and tens of millions of dollars of damage to computers worldwide.

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With the "Anna Kournikova" virus the damage was not as severe (and reading about it on ireland.com's Breaking News section minutes before opening my e-mail box meant that I was able to delete them without any damage). It did, however, slow down e-mail systems dramatically, particularly in Australia where the time difference meant that people were less likely to have found out about the problem in time. The good news about viruses is that, like the bleach that "Kills all known germs", virus protectors kill all known viruses. The problem, of course, is that since you bought your computer there have been a lot more viruses invented. The "Anna Kournikova" one, for instance, was supposedly downloaded from the Internet by the person who started the ball rolling by forwarding it in the first place.

Many organisations get weekly updates from their virus protector provider. The individual user can buy updated models in computer shops or subscribe to a service that provides regular updates. By paying an annual subscription fee to the McAfee anti-virus company you use the their applications as often as you like, no matter how often they upgrade them. For further information, go to www.mcafee.com.