Virus Protection and Hoax Recognition - Be Safe Not Sorry

Everyday I receive numerous emails with virus infections.
Many of them come in response to my sending out my twice
weekly newsletter to close to 12,000 subscribers.

What normally happens is a subscriber's system is infected
without them even realizing it. Their email program sends
out emails to everyone in their address book without them
knowing.

When I get an email that is infected, my anti-virus program,
Norton Anti Virus 2002 which I have used for many years,
intercepts it and gives me some options to either delete
or quarantine.

The regular viruses that I see attached to these emails are:

W32.Badtrans.B@mm
W32.Badtrans@mm.enc
W95.Hybris.worm
W32.Magistr.24876@mm
W32.Sircam.Worm@mm

There are other variations of the above and a couple other
different ones that I receive regularly.

If there is any one thing that you should do if you spend
any amount of time on the Net and send and receive email
on a regular basis is make sure that you have a good anti-
virus program. You also have to make sure that you keep it
up to date at all times. That is one of the reasons that
I like Norton, since it automatically updates and keeps
me current with protection against the latest viruses. I
am not a distributor for Norton but I highly recommend it
to anyone that asks me. It is not expensive. Their web site
is at: http://www.symantec.com/

The important thing to remember is that you can have an
active virus infection and not even know it. If you are
trying to run an online business and your potential
customers are getting virus attachments with the email
you are sending them, they probably won't be customers for
too long.

With the many email viruses now active around the Net, you
should also make it your practice not to open any attachments
to an email if you don't know who it is from. Most of the
email viruses become active when you open the attachment. But
again to be totally safe you should have a good anti-virus
program on your system. You could very well get an infected
email attachment on an email from someone you do know since
they might not be aware that they are transmitting it. An
anti-virus program will give you the protection you need.

The Email Hoax Problem

As far as the email hoax problem, they continue to circulate
over and over. When you get one of them you can see that it
has been forwarded many times by the number of ">>>>>>" in
the left column. Each of these >'s are signifiers of another
person forwarding the message.

Some of them are simply jokes and others can cause some
problems. Many just cause a tremendous amount of unnecessary
traffic like one of the ones involving Microsoft:

"If you receive an email titled "WIN A HOLIDAY" DO NOT open it.
It will erase everything on your hard drive. Forward this letter
to as many people as you can. This is a new, very malicious
virus and not many people know about it. This information was
announced yesterday morning from Microsoft;...."

Then there are ones like the "SULFNBK.EXE" hoax. This ones
says if you do a search on your computer for this file, you
have a serious virus infection and you should remove it
immediately and forward the message to as many people as you
can. Well this file is a real Windows file that controls
certain functions on your computer and you will find it in the
Window's Command folder when you do a search. If you find it
in different locations then you might have a virus since exe
files are normally the ones that get infected. But the email
hoax doesn't tell you that, it tells you that you should
immediately remove it if found. And many people do remove it.

Before you pass on any email like this you should check to
see if it is for real or not. There are a number of sites
that you can check at:

Symantec Site
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
Mining Co.(About.com) Virus and Hoax Guide
http://antivirus.miningco.com/msub2.htm
Data Fellow's Virus Page
http://www.europe.datafellows.com/vir-info
Virus Hoaxes and Net Lore
http://hoaxinfo.com
Rob Rosenberger's Site
http://www.vmyths.com
Hoaxbusters.org The Big List
http://hoaxbusters.org
Stiller Research Alphabetic Hoax List
http://www.stiller.com/hoaxa.htm
Hoax Kill
http://www.hoaxkill.com

What you should do when you have some time is go to these
sites and take a look at some of the most common ones so you
are familiar with them when you get one.

In summary, make sure that you have a good anti-virus program
to protect your system and be sure the information you get
in an email is valid before you do something to your computer
or forward the message to all of your friends.