Computer Viruses
- I learned basic programming on one of these
We've finally actually entered the era of computer viruses. After all the years of hype, we're now at the stage where viruses are becoming a common occurence. I've avoided infection myself, but we've had a couple of cases of people e-mailing us viruses (entirely innocently, of course) - most recently BadTrans. I also talked someone through the process of removing Navidad earlier in the year.
Viruses have always been around. But they've usually been low-impact, not really spreading, and caught by people before they caused too much damage. This is changing.
There are a few basic precautions that I take.
- Make sure that ant-virus software is up to date and running.
- Ideally, don't use a Microsoft mail reader. Or at least make sure that there isn't a preview pane running.
- Make sure that file extensions are shown for all file types. Anything with a double file extension is almost certainly a virus.
- Scan any attachment before opening it, no matter what the source
There are probably other things I could be doing, but this has seemed to work for me so far.
28 November, 2001
