What is the lifetime of a virus?
The level of danger posed by a virus will vary over time. Generally a virus is most dangerous when first released. Such viruses are considered “in the wild”, meaning they pose a real danger to infect and harm your computer. While there are hundreds of viruses in the wild at any given time, most are simple variations upon a much smaller set of viruses. Over time, as virus manufacturers introduce anti-infection data sets and software manufacturers patch the program holes exploited by viruses, a given strain of virus will pose less and less of a threat.
