How Does Weather affect Your Internet Use? Can it Slow Your Down?

• Tweet

• Tweet

As I am writing this article, many of you are just getting over a huge storm called Hercules that dumped tons of snow throughout the Mid West and North East. Since our office is located in Florida, we very rarely see any form of frozen precipitation but it does sometimes snow just to our north in Georgia and occasionally in the Florida Panhandle. When it snows and it is freezing cold outside, you usually try to stay indoors where it is warm, toasty and cozy.

When the cold weather strikes, usually we opt to stay inside and either watch TV or use the computer. Even though we are based in Florida, we get a lot more calls for computer service during the winter months then during the summer.  This trend has been the norm for years. When the weather is bad and you cannot or do not want to leave the house, you tend to use your computer a lot more. We see a huge increase in things like shopping, social network activity and general surfing. When more time is spent on the computer, you are more prone to getting infected. In fact, most Malware writers know this and will often distribute new Malware variants during the cold winter months as well.

This change in Internet use may not even be noticed by most people because it is something you really do not think about. If you track your computer usage by season over a prolonged period of time, you will defiantly start to see a pattern year after year. During the summer months, most parts of the country have a very short period where the weather is warm and pleasant. Most folks during this time try to make the most of it and take long vacations or spend hours at the beach, if you live near the coast. This does not give you a lot of free time to use your computer.

If you live in the warmer climates such as Florida or California, the patterns will probably not have as much as a swing as other colder parts of the country. In fact, you might notice your Internet use to be fairly steady all year long in these locations.

This past summer, we saw the beginning of one of the worst virus infections ever created. It was called the CryptoLocker virus. The virus affected many folks and lots of people lost their data if they did not have a backup. Fortunately, some of the servers running this virus were shut down just before the big Christmas shopping rush started. This helped to curb some of the infections that could of happened during this time period.

So the next time you are using your computer, take a look at the weather outside and start making notations about weather conditions and how long you spend on the computer. You will be surprised to see that a pattern is there that you probably never thought about. You will find that you spend more hours on the computer during the winter then during the summer.

Article  posted by, Ross Deprey  the owner of Computer Geeks Online