What are the points of viruses.

silkyuk9

Ive had a pc for years, must be over 10, anyway, as most im sure, ive had my fair share of viruses and the problems that go with it. Ive never had any issues with any virus that has stolen money from me, which i mean taken my bank details or even as far as i know stolen my identity.

Most viruses ive encountered just mess with the pc and make computing difficult and frustrating, so the viruses ive had have had no impact on my life in terms of being ripped off.

Why do people make viruses anyway, what is the point?

Also, has anyone any virus stories to tell that had done serious damage or even stolen money identities etc??

tbourner

Some of the boring viruses come from badly written software, but most are written by lonely programmers who want a bit of fun. Same reason anyone does anything antisocial they get pleasure from knowing people are suffering because of them, like a power trip kind of thing.
It's the same with chain emails I suppose, there's no point in them either but people enjoy writing them knowing they'll be forwarded around the world by naive folk.

Esqui

People make viruses either because they can, or because they want to commit despicable acts. Some might use your computer to do illegal activities - so while nothing's taken from you, your computer could be used to take things from others. But you just notice a slower or weirdly-behaving computer. But I'd say the vast majority are just created to see if they can be created

Trinitrotoluene

There are many reasons including but not limited to:

1) Stealing your personal information and selling it or using it (credit card information/identity fraud/blackmail)
2) Using your PC as part of a botnet (basically using the resources of your PC to launch attacks against other sites
3) Redirection to target paid sites (basically gaining excess traffic to one particular website thus increasing ad/sales revenue)
4) Reporting your web browsing habits to third parties who pay for the information so they can better target ads
5) Stealing logon credentials to gain access to emails/banking etc
6) Using your PC as a relay for spam

It goes on.

enigma52

anti virus programme sellers to convince you their product needs buying

Chimpofdoom

Hell some guys do it because they can get awesome jobs in Computer security.

I remember watching a documentary about the worlds best hackers/virus writers being picked up my large companies with 6 figure salaries!

Who says Crime doesn't pay?! :rotfl: