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Chain mail
Virus Alerts
Microsoft Outlook
Security Updates for microsoft
Anti virus software
Ads and pop up suppressors
Adware
Chain mail
When you receive some heart string pulling email saying "forward this
email on" you will received money, some poor person will receive money,
you will have good luck, etc... It is ALWAYS bad. Please do not give
out your friends email to evil. You can often read about these hoaxes on urbanlegends.about.com.
Virus Alerts
If someone tells you they are/might be infected and may have sent it to you.
As a good rule of thumb: Read up on your own about it. One interesting place
to check out is urbanlegends.about.com (or
urbanlegends.com). Often
it will have the popular virus hoax you have just been sent. But if you can
not find it there, go to google.com and
search for it. Search for the name of that particular virus and see if it is
a hoax or what you should do about it. Do not follow the instructions in the
email or click on any link that may be supplied. The email may be a virus.
It may be a email sent by a well meaning person who doesn't know that it is
instructing you to do something bad. Always check it out for yourself!
Don't use Microsoft Outlook
Most all of today's viruses are designed by hackers to spread via the address
program in Microsoft Outlook. Using another e-mail program won't guarantee that
you won't infect yourself with a virus, but it could help prevent that virus
from being sent to all of your friends and colleagues via your address book.
- Eudora program (PC) is a good alternative
to Outlook.
- Hotmail any online
email program that does not download emails directly to your computer. Most
of them are free. Most of them have virus scanning and spam guards that help
out (but not fool proof).
Security Updates for microsoft
It is a good idea to keep on top of updating the security patches for your
microsoft products. Often when Microsoft puts out a patch to a security weakness-
it tells all the hackers where the weakness- is and in about 25 days after
they release the update all the hackers hope you haven't updated and send out
viruses
that attack that weakness- you can set it up with Microsoft to send you alerts
to let you know when a new update is released. or you can go directly to the
download
page.
Anti virus software
Get the best anti-virus software you can find. It doesn't need to be the most
expensive.
How often should I update my Anti-virus
definition files?It's up to you, at work we update every day.
You may feel comfortable updating them once a week. But if you receive lots
of
e-mail
attachments,
you
should update
the definitions more often. We update daily, but run scans only every
couple of days. My AV software checks all incoming mail and checks all web
site's that
I connect to, so having the virus definitions updated daily works well for
me. I perform full disk scans for viruses only a couple of times a week because
I
have large capacity hard disks and it takes several hours to complete a full
disk scan.
Ads and pop up suppressors
I recommend finding a program which removes adverts, popup's and other annoying
things from all popular browsers, as well as most banner displaying and popup
generating programs like ICQ, Morpheus, Kazaa, Grokster, Opera, PalTalk, iMesh,
Bearshare, LimeWire, etc. Scramble your IP and remove other unique identifiers
to protect your privacy! They remove banner ads, unwanted pop-ups, pop-unders,
web bugs that can spawn bad things in your computer including Adware.
Adware
Adware (also called “malware” or “spyware”) refers
to programs which install themselves either without your knowledge or are installed
as part of a bundle of software which came with another program such AOL (including
Instant Messenger) or the file sharing programs Kazaa and Morpheus. They can
also behave like viruses and create problems for you. Often adware will install
itself automatically when you access specific website's. These installation
processes are usually spawned by popup windows. Often the
website's. serving adware will “pitch” their downloads as free
products or services, such as free fonts or free screen saver images. When
you “download” the
free items, you are actually installing the adware.
Adware does several things:
- Adware connects back to the host companies’ URL and reports on your
web browsing and buying habits, including sites visited and ads clicked,
etc. Many people consider these adware programs to violate privacy laws,
and as
a result, these programs are often referred to as "spyware."
- Adware
affect the computer’s performance because they “run in
the background” and sap valuable system resources. Because these programs
often cause system errors and cause other programs to crash, they are often
referred to as “malware.”
The most common adware/malware/spyware programs include Gator (aka “Trickler”),
Comet Cursor, and Xupiter. There are many, many more... Often legitimate programs
will contained built-in spyware. Real Networks products including RealAudio,
Real Download, RealPlayer, and RealJukebox all contain
built-in spyware which reports back to Real Networks whenever you launch their
programs. Presently Acrobat 6 is having a very hard time and conflicts with
some of the bad adware out there (I recommend downloading Acrobat 5 at http://www.oldversion.com if
you are having problems and don't wish to remove other adware) For a list of
common adware programs and what they are programmed to do, check
out this informative website: http://doxdesk.com/parasite
How can I tell if I have adware on my computer?
If you press CTRL+ALT+DELETE, and then review the “tasks” and “processes” list,
you may see some of the processes (listed above) running in the background. To
download a tool which can search for and identify adware programs running in
the background of your computer, you can go to this website: http://www.spychecker.com For
comprehensive, technical information about adware programs and adware detection
and removal software: http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm
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