Idiot's guide to virus protection

Death

gh0d (Administrator)
Judging from the annoyingly high number of hits (read: more than zero) at chatzone@ of infected machines trying to spread their infections, it's apparently necessary to cover some basics of protecting oneself from getting their computer infected.

First off, don't run strange files attached to e-mails from people whom you don't know.

Second, even if you do recognize the sender's address, before you open up any attachment, ask yourself this one question:
Why is this being sent to me?
If you can't answer the question, then don't run the file, period. If in doubt about whether the known person intended to send it, either assume that they didn't intend to send it (more than a few viruses/worms/etc out there have the ability to send mail independent of operator action) and treat it as a potential virus, or write back to them and ask what's up. Chances are that, if the sent message is from an infection, the other party may not even know it was sent.

Third: get an antivirus program. Which one you get is pretty much a personal issue, but when shopping around for AV programs look for things like how often the virus definitions are updated, how fast new threats are reacted to, and the ease of updating your system's definitions (after all, many won't do something if it's a hassle to do, even if doing it will keep Bad Things™ from happening).

Fourth, for those of you running Outlook Express, disable the preview window. Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom *cough*, decided that the preview window should be allowed to execute code automatically, without any further action on the user's part. Anyone who realizes the internet in general is not an extention of the MS corporate intranet, and that there are more than a few Not Nice™ people out there, should be able to figure out why auto-execution is bad. This obviously excludes Microsoft coders, or at the very least the management idiots that tell them what features to put in.

Fifth, later versions of OE (4.7 onwards, I believe) have, buried deep in the configuration, the option to treat anything viewed through OE as being in the Restricted Zone, and apply IE's Restricted Zone rules, which should cut down on a lot of the hassles. (Optionally, edit RZ rules so that all the "prompt" selections are changed to "disabled".)

Finally and most importantly, USE YOUR FREAKING BRAIN. Apply a bit of common sense (or find someone who has that increasingly rare attribute) to anything you get in the mail. Not only obvious stuff like viruses, but for the "friend of a friend" forwardings, various e-mail hoaxes, and assorted trivial crap that tends to clutter one's e-mail inbox. Be considerate of the person at the other end of the copper/fiber/etc; don't abuse the privilege (that is what being able to send another person e-mail is: a privelege, not a right) of being able to talk to them, or else you'll lose it.
 
Interesting. I didn't know there was such a problem that it merited not only a post, but a post from Death.

If I am (or was) one of these people, I'd rather someone from the CZ told me. I'm not going to taint one of my favorite websites (and my only BB) with some shitty virus; I do have Norton (which runs Liveupdate every other day) but still...
 
Yesterday, the guy who handles the software updates at my company went around and updated the McAffee AV program that we all use here.
First thing this morning when I turn my monitor on (computer stays on overnight, and that's when it runs the daily AV check) there's a little note about a program in the 'temporary' (meaning that they'll be automatically deleted when their set date is reached in roughly a decade or so) internet files folder that is apparently a trojan of some sort.
Lovely...
At least there was no chance of the file being anything important that had been corrupted.
 
Things are really, really bad. I still regularly get that "Snow white and the 7 dwarves" e-mail virus from people. I get about half a dozen Klez mails each day too. People really click the dumbest things.

And then you have those people who installed Norton AV back in 1996 and never update the virus definitions. "But I've got protection!"
 
hey i work at tech support for a company that looks after pcs for over 3 quarters of british doctors surgeries as well as nearly half of legal companies in england

the company recommend Mcaffee but every single person in tech suppt uses norton, mainly cos when we tested the 2 against each other out of 20 high profile virii including michealangelo, doomsday and chernobyl, mcafee got 2
norton got 20

go figure which i use :D
 
Mcaffe is a pretty blah program. We use to have to install it when I was "Sys Admin"of my school computer systems. Before I left, I had them change over to Norton.
 
good boy lehah :p

my old school didnt use any :-/ then were surprised when doomsday took network down for 2 weeks lol not my problem :D
 
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