# 7.2 Virus propagation as misuse

Complete Activity 6.

## Activity 6: Computer viruses and spyware

A recurrent fear with computer installations connected to the internet is that of computers sending private information to outsiders using computer viruses or internet ‘cookies’. If a computer virus infected your computer, and then broadcast personal information about other people which you happened to store on your computer for perfectly legitimate reasons, what areas of law would apply?

### Discussion

There’s clearly a data protection issue here, and while you did not misuse the data, you could be deemed not to have kept the data secure enough. The person who sent the virus is also guilty of computer misuse, and could be charged if he or she were caught.

OpenLearn - Software and the law
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.