If you think worms are the gardener's friend and 'SoBig' is something you say when you're gesticulating to the assistant in B&Q's timber department, then count yourself lucky.

For the rest of us, these words are increasingly familiar and the bad news is that they're part of a growing vocabulary used to describe threats lurking on the internet.

Computer viruses, worms and Trojans are far from recent inventions, but it's only recently that they've become a serious problem.

In the early days of personal computers, pretty much the only way to contract a virus was to use a floppy disk that was infected with one. And, unless you went to floppy swapping parties, the chances of your computer contracting something unsavoury were slim.

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