The Virus Problem
Several years ago, the main external issue for a home computer user to worry about was virus. Generally, the way a virus got onto a computer was from a program, either on a floppy disk or a downloaded file from the Internet. It didn't happen all that often, so sometimes folks got a little careless and then a virus would give the user a wakeup call!
There were all sorts of virus that users had to watch for, so most responsible users invested in a virus scanner and paid an annual subscription to keep the scanner updated. The scanner was usually updated about once a month and that was generally sufficient to keep virus at bay.
Then more and more virus started to appear on the scene and it came in email. Just one click on an attachment could infect a computer. Virus scanners had to be updated more often, sometimes every day! Whew! Virus scanners had to be written to automatically update as soon as possible when a new virus came on the web.
Most users thought getting a virus was the worst thing that could happen to a computer. Some of the virus could make a computer unusable and about the only fix available was to wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows. After this happened, a user learned as much as possible about making a backup. A whole new hardware industry was born out of the need for backups. Some people used tape drives that would copy all the files on a computer, while others used zip drives that could be used for backing up essential files like word documents. New hardware needed new software to automate as much as possible the backup process. Making backups started to become a time consuming and expensive process, but necessary to avoid loss of needed data.
More and more people got 'with the information age' and started using a computer and the spread of virus increased rapidly. Users unfamiliar with the concept of virus unwittingly allowed virus to be sent from their computers. As more and more of these users started to access the Internet with an 'always on' broadband connection, virus writers started using a new insidious way to spread their evil wares and turned thousands of computers into 'zombies' sending a constant stream of virus laden emails to unsuspecting recipients.