What are access violations?

An access violation is like trying to open a door that’s locked when you don’t have a key, it just doesn’t work, and someone might get confused.

Imagine you’re playing with your favorite toy box. Inside are all your toys: blocks, cars, dolls. You know exactly where each one is. But sometimes, you try to grab a toy that's not yours, maybe it’s in the big kid’s box, and when you pull it out without asking, you might break it or even get scolded.

Now think of the computer as a giant toy box. Inside are all sorts of data and instructions for programs. The computer has keys (called permissions) to access different parts of this toy box. But if a program tries to grab a toy that doesn’t belong to it, like trying to read something it shouldn’t, that’s an access violation, just like when you grabbed the wrong toy and got in trouble.

Sometimes, the computer even stops working for a moment because it doesn’t know what to do next, kind of like when you’re confused after grabbing the wrong toy and have to figure out which one was yours.