A Trojan is a very nasty kind of computer virus that can infect your PC by being hidden in seemingly harmless and helpful files and start to cause all kinds of nuisances ranging from slowing down your machine to even deleting very important system files. The name for this type of threat originates from the mythical Trojan horse that was used as a stratagem by the Greeks to infiltrate Troy and sabotage their defenses by night and eventually conquer it. The horse was presented to the people of Troy as a gift that also represented a truce but actually, the so called gift was filled with soldiers that came out of their hiding by night and  opened the main gates of Troy to allow entrance to the entire army.

Much like the horse in the story, a Trojan usually comes disguised as a funny or interesting e-mail attachment or link that as soon as it’s opened infects your PC’s hard disk and starts damaging it. Here are some general principles on fending off Trojans and Trojan removal.

The first thing you need to be very mindful of are the email messages you receive. Make sure you always use an email server that has an attachment scanning feature incorporated into it because  this kind of tools can save you a lot of trouble in the long run. When this is not possible, if for example you are using Microsoft Outlook or any other similar e-mail browser, then be very careful on what you click and what you open. Actually it’s best to just remove any e-mail that looks suspicious even if the subject seems very interesting.

Another good precaution that you can take against Trojans is to always keep your anti-virus program up-to-date because this kind of PC security software can prove to be a valuable tool and a top-notch Trojan remover. If you are under the impression that your PC has been infected, the first thing that you can do is to run a full system scan to try to detect and remove Trojan viruses. This is where keeping your anti-virus program up-to-date really becomes an  important issue because while your software probably could detect the majority of the trojans out there, you may be infected with a new one that your anti-virus may not be aware of. As such, having your virus definitions updated frequently is key in keeping your computer safe.

If all this fails and your computer starts to show some symptoms of a trojan infection, like running slowly, mouse moving by itself, internet browser windows popping up out of nowhere or random computer restarts and shut downs, then it’s time to turn to a dedicated trojan horse virus removal tool. Because nowadays we are starting to see a rise in the number of this type of malware over the web, there are certain programs, many of them even free of charge, solely created to remove trojan, virus and spyware threats from your machine.