Hey folks this is an issue that will continue to plague us until the
world no longer uses computers. (anybody got a guess when that will
be??) There are folks out there that are plain malicious.
There is no foolproof way to avoid them. There are a number of ways to
reduce your expose though. I have worked with Univ of Penn's ISC
Computer Security group on a number of issues, this being one of them.
Their (and mine) recommendations are:
1) No Outlook Express. Nope Nada None. Unfortunately, MS sees fit to
include that in their OS so everybody that uses an MS OS gets it. It's
free, fairly easy to use, so it gets used. What makes it vulnerable is
it's reliance on Visual Basic. and Visual Basic Scripts. MS also does
not update it for vulnerabilities. They do update Outlook, but usually
some days after a vulnerability is recognized. Corporate IT has been
sold on the idea of Exchange so getting rid of Outlook is not likely to
happen soon. If you use Outlook, do not use the preview pane. It
automatically opens the email, and if it has a virus lod it is off and
running. Also you can set it to NOT download the attachments. Then you
only get the text and leave the attachment on the server giving you a
chance to delete it BEFORE getting the attachment that infects you.
2) Use a good AV program and update once a DAY. For the most part that
is the best you can do. Penn Licenses Norton AV from Symantec. Good,
not great. None of them are really "great".
3) As Bill suggests use a different email program. Penn uses Eudora and
Netscape. Avoid Netscape 6. 6.23 is pretty good and 7 is just out.
Better yet, use Mozilla (www.mozilla.org). Mozilla is the code base AOL
uses for Netscape. It also has a switch (Preferences:Advanced) that
turns off those annoying POP-UPs. But AOL strips out the POP-UP
avoidance part in Netscape. After all they want to sell advertising.
4) Using a bogus address in your address book fooled some earlier
virii, but more recent ones, like Klez, aren't fooled by that anymore.
A lot of them can even get email addresses from places on your computer
BESIDES your Address Book, like the Web Cache.
Remember that as fast as a AV program can be updated, the virus has to
be in the wild first. The virus writers will always be one step ahead.
A personal observation. It seems to me that more virii (is that really
a word?) have shown up since mid Oct 2001, than ever before. Know what
started in mid Oct last year??
Well sorry go to off on a rant here but, that's my opinion. I may be
wrong.
Larry
One last suggestion: Use a Mac (now with UNIX) ;-)
--
Larry Macy
78 Midget
Keep your top down and your chin up.
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