Just to clear a few things up.

Hacking can only be as harmful as the person wants it to be. Most of the time hacking is used to get your information. They may install a payload or backdoor to allow them to keep getting to your info, but they are probably NOT going to destroy your files. If they wanted to they could easily add a virus or worm to do it. But generally hacking is much worse for your personal information than your computer.

Malware is just a general term for viruses, trojans, etc. It's not really a proper choice here. As it encompasses viruses.

Virus in the strictest sense is a file that infects one and makes and proceeds to infect other files. Trojan Horses are similar expect they usually take over a system file. There are a few other pieces of malware out there.

As Madus pointed out worms can be very dangerous as they can self-propagate without any user interaction. However, most of the time, they are simply used to backdoor and hack the machine. However they can be used to delete files etc.

As for which one is the most dangerous, it honestly just depends on what type it is. Every one of them can be dangerous to the computer. Aside from the virus which is specifically used to cause harm, the others can also get personal information in addition to causing computer problems.

Malaware. because it's hard to get rid of. slows you're computer. and is just a pain to deal with






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Virus is the worst for my computer. Not sure about A hack. I think that would be bad though.

Virus is pretty bad, if it gets strong enough, it can pretty much infect your computer and you will not do anything on it ever. I had it once.

Well viruses wreck your computer, so I am going to have to go with a virus. My last computer was actually somewhat fast, up until we got a virus. It started out small, but gradually became worse until it was so bad, that we couldn't even get it repaired.