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While on the subject of virii. for the past month or so ive been getting john_f.doc.pif attatchments in an email with a message like: i send you my work so you may offer advice. scanned it, virus, deleted it, no worries. A post here made me think about two weeks ago when i came home and found a dialer.exe connected to the internet and a desktop icon named "liveshows" a nice little note on my keyboard from my brother that said " i tried to delete it from the start menu but it just kept coming back. He claims ( i have no way of verifying now) that all he did was open an email. My first thought was " how many times has this happened and hes simply deleted the desktop icon" and my second thought was "is this compulsive clicking in email accounts typical of most users?" I formatted and locked him out of everything but disney.com. My point is how many of our friends, relatives, bosses downloading, spreading virii on a daily basis. imagine the teenagers with the "forward this funny little garbage" someone forwarded them. I had to create a desktop background with the dos and donts of the internet for him, and im still not sure if hes following them. This keeps symantec in business. If i ever catch the guy who wrote the first email virus ill superglue him to an anthill.:)
Microsoft contributes most to the spread of virii with hiding by default the extensions of the known file types....it is so simple that i cant help thinking that they do it by purpose..... not many people would click on a file with a fake extension
Regards Miro
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Miro - Could you please explain your post and give examples? What is a default extension? And what do you mean by known file types?
Thanks. I agree education is the solution, but so many times people use terminology that I don't understand. I keep coming back here to learn more.
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Well theres an option(turned on as default) to hide extensions for known file type so Sircainthethird.exe would show up as sircainthethird and if the hacker or cracker gives the exe file the default win98 icon of a jpeg icon people might double click it thinking they can see Sir Cain male gigalo.
Some like .SHS are hidden even IF you told the computer to show all files (im sure somethings going on here! why would MS do that for any good??)
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it is as Michael said.. on top of it the microsoft outlook is designed to mass mail the viruses to everybody in the address book... why would MS do that?... it is so simple - to allow viruses to spread
Regards Miro
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Just keep your anti virus up-to-date and allow it to scan incoming email. I know it takes resources, but, to run the programs you want and need to run is what resources are for. You catch virii before they get in, so you can't run them.
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a friend got infected two days ago with sircam despite keeping her virus deffinitions current on mcafe... the only way to protect is to be selective opening atachments...(same like you would not eat any candy you find on the sidewalk..thats how i thought my daughter not to open atachments)... i would also get infected if i would rely on hotmail attachment virus scan.
Regards Miro
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Selective opening of attachments means that you decide which attachments to open.
Are you saying you can recognize a file containing a virus or a malicious macro better than Norton or McAfee Antivirus with 10s of thousands of known virii to check against?
I'm not saying they catch everthing, but they work better than nothing.
Keep in mind that many of the people reading these posts are new to computing and wouldn't recoginize a threat to their computer, especially disguised as a different type of file.
A good antivirus program, kept up-to-date is a decent tool to minimize the risk.
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yes, i can decide it better... attachment with a fake double extension is a virus or a worm or a trojan....any unsolicited attachement is suspect... any software download from unreliable source is suspect...
i back up all my data, and in case i would get a virus i reformat the computer and reload the system....
Regards Miro
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agree, with user being better equipped to detect a virus via email atatchment. more often than not when somome is emailing us a file they let us know first. ie. "im sending you the fletcher file tonight" if you get a mysterious email say from someone who rarely sends you files dont open it. somone you dont know dont open it. double file extension dont open it. etc. AV programs usually only catch old virii they cant release a fix for something that aint broke. I like the bit about the gum on a sidewalk, but you have to figure in the 5 second rule. if something hits the floor its still good if picked up within 5 seconds :) I have saved a number of cookies, chips, sandwiches from trash can death using this rule.
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In twenty years of computer use, I've had three infections:
1. Came in on a diskette from another branch of the company I worked for. Norton detected and deleted it during a full scan.
2. My wife opened an email from my sister that had a worm in it. The email originally came from her nephew and mailed itself to us. I updated norton and it deleted the infected file.
3. Another just appeared during an AV scan of the Restore archives, I don't know where that one came from more than likely as an email attachment. I disabled Restore, Norton deleted the virus and I reenabled Restore.
Norton has stopped dozens of others before they even got in the door. I think only three in twenty years is a pretty good record.
By the way, how do you check out that "suspect" attachment? Save it to disk and scan it with Norton or McAfee?
I've got better things to do then reformat my computer.
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Miro and ShutMeUpOrDown,
What I am trying to say is that you guys are computer experts, long time users with a vast knowledge of what is right and wrong in computing. Most people lack that degree of computer knowledge and, worse yet, have no interest in aquiring that much computer knowledge. They just want to turn it on and have it work.Look at the people you know, how many come to you when they have a computer problem? Are many of your friends as knowledgable about computers as you are? How many people do you know that send every forwarded email as an attachment(I know a few of these people)?
Miro, you often use a car analogy, here is one for you. People with computers are often like people with cars. They want it to start when they turn the key, they don't have to know how or why it starts. They know they need to put in gas, but as long as they know someone else who can check the oil they may not even know where the dipstick is.
I also check out my email attachments before opening them in addition to letting Norton scan them, but I would rather that someone who doesn't check (or even know how to check) file extensions, would use their antivirus to check all incoming email.
To get back to the main topic of this thread, yes, education could also be a useful tool in combating virii. The problem is, you can try to teach a person anything, what they will actually learn, however, you have no control over.
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no attachement is so important to be opened in 5 seconds.... i agree that it you dont want to completely abandon and discard the "suspect" atachments an antivirus scan of them is needed, but i prefere rather to email that person back and if i dont hear from them i know that their computer is ruined by a virus ;-)
definitely there is no need for a continuous running of AV programs, the suspect files can be scanned on demand
... i had in 12 years only one virus (despite my wife and daughter using the computers) "half and half" that i got with a foreign language word processing software installation floppy disc and it was not recognized by dr solmon and mcaffe for a long time... that made me to abandon the AV programs....
back to the car analogy.... i consider the AV programs similar to antilock breaks... they might help you in marginal situations, but they dont make your car to stop on a dime when driving 80 mph.... and people who thinks it does, have to buy a new car(if they are lucky)
regards Miro
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