A word about  viruses.

 What are  viruses? They are  malicious little programs that  are  created  by some computer genius who was  bored and  wanted to challenge themselves to see  what they  could create.  Some viruses cause minimal damage while others can infect a major  portion of your  computer,  even attack your BIOS (this is vital part of your hardware) and leave your computer permanently damaged.   Why ??  I  ask that  all  the  time.  It  is  too bad we have to  deal  with viruses but they are out  there, and  created daily.   So  we  may as  well  be as  informed as we can, there are  too many to  be  familiar  with all of them  so  it is  better to  be  educated on how to  recognize  the  potential danger.  Nothing is 100%  effective but the  more  informed we are the  better our chances are to  remain virus free.  Common sense goes along way in protecting  your  computer.

Protect your  computer by installing Antivirus software.  We all have  personal preferences.  I use and  trust  Norton Antivirus by Symantec .  There are also free antivirus programs that you can download on line that I have  heard  wonderful things about.

http://www.grisoft.com/html/us_index.htm

http://www.free-av.com/

Whichever Antivirus program you choose, once installed you must keep the antivirus definitions up to date.    It is  surprising how many  people think  once the  program is  installed  they are  fully  protected. You must update  weekly to be on top of things.   Take the  time to learn how your  antivirus program  works, if you don't understand the program, how  can you  expect to  feel  safe from viruses.

 

Helpful Hints

1. Treat all attachments as containing potential viruses.

2. Do not open any attachments unless  you have scanned them with an up to date antivirus program or you were expecting them from a trusted source. Remember sad  but  true,  the virus  creators are  always one step ahead of the antivirus programs.

3. Never open attachments if you do not know who is the sender, and  if you do know the  sender  still use  caution and  scan for viruses!  Just  because you know  someone  doesn't  guarantee  they  won't  send you a  virus..  they  might not  know  they  have it in  their computer.   Some  viruses now are so sophisticated that they  can  go into the  infected computer and  use  some one else's name from the address  book to  forward  a  email to  another person.

4. Be very cautious of any attachment with a file extension that indicates it is a type of program. Files ending with extensions of .exe, .pif, .vbs should be treated as viruses. Image files such as .gif or .jpg are usually safe to open as they are not programs however,  you need to  be aware of trojan viruses that disguise themselves as harmless files eg: filename.gif.pif , the file is a .pif virus but it pretends to be a .gif image file.

5. If you receive a suspicious e-mail attachment or if you are unsure as to why you have been sent the attachment, e-mail the sender with a new e-mail (do not reply to the original suspect e-mail) asking them to confirm that they meant to send you the attachment. If they have contracted the virus they may not even know that they have sent it on to you.

6. Most e-mail viruses are targeted at the Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs.  You might  consider using one of the many free alternative programs such  as  Yahoo or Netscape Messenger.  Not to  say  there  is  any  guarantee, if  a  virus is in the wild  it   can  wind up  any where.

7. Delete any suspect e-mails from your inbox and then make sure you delete them from your Trash or Deleted Items folder to totally remove them from your system.

8.  If you read about a virus or receive a virus warning, please checkout the  validity of the  information. Two great resources are Symantec and Urban Legends. Why do this..  it is  important to  stay  informed and   also   not to  spread   false rumors.

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ 

http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/virushoaxes1/index.htm

9. As a precaution  to those of you  who  use Outlook and  Outlook Express enter into your address book  !000 as a  contact... with no  email address.  Should  you get infected with a  mass mailer  virus  and it  attempts to send  emails it  will be  stopped  by the program as  not  having a  valid  address and  this will alert you that your  computer is  infected.

10. When addressing  e-mail, get in the habit of  using BCC (blind carbon copy). This hides who the  recipients are so your  e-mail  address is  exposed to  less people and computer viruses too!!!  This is  a  very  handy feature.  Ever get an  email and  you have to  wade  through  a  20, 40,   or  100   addresses  before you get to  read   the  message... this   makes for  a  much  cleaner  email especially  if the  message  has been  forwarded a few times, and it  cuts  way down on your  exposure to those  nasty   viruses going through your  address book.  I might add  some ISP's  don't  deliver   e-mail if there is no name in the  "TO"  line of the  email...  so   I  usually  send a copy of the  email to myself.

11. Snow White and the   7 dwarfs.. the  real   story ...  sound  interesting?  Well  if it  arrives in your  email  as an attachment  it  is  probably a virus.  This has  been around a while but to be on the safe  side it might be a good idea to  add hahaha@sexyfun.net to your  block sender list.

12. Many people have  deleted legitimate windows file because they received an email  hoax telling them to  delete jdbgmgr.exe or sulfnbk.exe and  without  checking the  validity of the  email. Don't  fall  for this  trick,  it originated by some one trying to  cause  unwarranted  concern.