How do virus' get into computers in general?

[Adamsman]

My mother had her AOL account get a virus in it where people were getting emails from her that she hadn't sent (everyone on her AOL contact list) and it was just a message saying "click here" and an ad of some sort. She thought it was my brother's ex-wife doing it as a revenge thing as the ex-wife has gone into people's emails before but he has been divorced 4 years and I doubt it was. Are these always from someone who knows someone else and is hacking their account or do they just go around from random computer to random computer?

[zezo]

when u download things from an unreliable source. and when u dont have an antivirus.

EDITE :@shondra keylogger=virus

[Shondra Waserstine]

that isn't a virus, simply put someone has access to her account. Probably she registered for a website recently that either sold or gave away her information. The other possibility is she has accidentally downloaded a key-logger attached to another file, in this case there are many free key-logger scan programs

[Tyler]

Did she open any email or spam? That's the only way i can see this happening.

[curtis s]

In general viruses get on your PC when you go to websites or download things. This means you can get them pretty much anywhere. The best places to go that rarely have them are famous websites like google and facebook since they have security to prevent people from putting viruses on their sites. More obscure sites may not be safe. Also, if you are going to download anything, it is best to do some from some place that has reviews from other users so that you can gauge the quality of the download from what others say about it.

Getting viruses from hackers directly is extremely rare and usually only the result of rage and retaliation. So as long as you don't actively attempt to piss people off on the internet you should not be at any true risk of this happening to you. That said, avoid opening emails from people that you don't recognize. Some people like to hack large groups of people for fun, or for gaining access to their accounts to use them improperly.

[Richard James]

In this case it's probably a worm activated by clicking on a zipped attachment.

How do viruses get into computers generally? Through a user's lack of awareness of security issues, over-reliance on a single security suite, unsafe browsing habits, failure to patch vulnerable applications and failure to beef up security along with not understanding how to spot threats that have gone undetected by security software.