) ( ( ) Good Morning Family! ( \ .-.,--^--. ( Come on in. . . \* ) \\|`----'| - The coffee pot's on. . . .=|=. \| |// ...and we even have decaf, |~'~| | |/ tea, and hot chocolate! | | \ / _|___|_ ------ (_______) Today's topics include: 1. Welcome to new cousins 2. About computer virus hoaxes 3. Ten clues that your computer may be infected 4. FYI links a. An interesting article link regarding spam b. Are you gullible? TO OUR NEWEST COUSINS ~~ On behalf of the entire 4H family, I'd like to extend a most hearty welcome to those cousins who came into the family fold this past week. We are very glad to have you with us and hope you'll stay and remain a part of our online family. As soon as you're comfortable with us and the list, please send in your Howell lines so we can all see how we're related to you. We do not have a fancy format for sending in records or queries to the list. Post as many as you wish! If the data has anything to do with Howell ancestors or any of the 9 variant spellings we research that might help someone, please feel free to post it. Every scrap of information is appreciated. You have joined not just a list, but a family of cousins who are four teams of researchers combined into one family, the 4H. Although we are one family, we have two homesites and if you haven't visited these sites yet, you are encouraged to do so ~ Home for the HOWELL-L, HOWELLS-SOUTHERN-L, and HOWLE-L is the Howell Research Room (otherwise known as the HRR) which opened May 28th. You'll find it located at <http://howellresearch.com>. While not large in size yet, this site is to become a clearinghouse dedicated to global research of the Howell[s] surname and all her variant spellings. You're invited to submit material for display at the HRR. Simply let me know you want to house material there and what it is. We can display anything, provided it doesn't involve living persons. Contact me at <[email protected]>. Home for the HOWELL-SURNAME-L is the Edward Howell Family Association site at <http://www.ehfa.org>. This is a site dedicated to descendants of Edward Howell of Southampton, Long Island, New York. There you'll find an online transcription of "Descendants of Edward Howell (1584-1655) of Westbury Manor, Marsh Gibbon, Buckinghamshire, [England], and Southampton, Long Island, New York," Second Edition by Dr. David Faris. Web mistress for the EHFA site is Kristen Howell <[email protected]>. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is the fifth in a series of Coffees dedicated to showing our newbies the "cyberspace ropes" and those novices who might still need the lessons. Today's subject on virus hoaxes will arm you with yet another tool to protect your computer and (hopefully) keep you from coming down with the Chicken Little syndrome! :) ABOUT COMPUTER VIRUS HOAXES Hoaxes are indirectly related to viruses ~ not because they cause malicious harm to your computer, but because they replicate or propagate themselves. They have been known to start off as a prank, but tend to get out of hand and never die. Hoaxes are usually warnings about "virus alerts" and tend to feed off people's fears and their desire to stop viruses. They can also be a letter from the small child missing or dying of cancer, which plays on your sense of humanity. Unlike a virus, a hoax can not propagate itself; a hoax relies upon good people with good intentions to spread.... You love the email list(s) you belong to. The people are soooo nice and sooo helpful! Then your inbox seems to explode with "the" message and certainly elevates your blood pressure: "WARNING: DO NOT OPEN.... yada yada yada ...your hard drive will be erased (or some equally horrific thing)!!!" This warning is filled with CAPITALIZED WORDS and lots of exclamation marks!!!!! "Tell everyone you know!!! Send this everyone in your address book!!!" The message came from your mom, sister, brother, best friend, acquaintance, *someone/anyone* who cares about you and your computer ~ so it must be fact! "Oh, NO!" You don't want your listmates to suffer those consequences! So you send it to the list right away. Just a short while later, you can't understand why you're now getting all these messages filled with irritation from people telling you that it was a hoax; that you should have checked it out first. Yet, all you were trying to do was help, right? You didn't know. Unfortunately, tender newbie, you were slammed with what I call the Chicken Little syndrome. ("The sky is falling, the sky is falling!") Without fail, this syndrome seems to strike EVERY newbie (a long time ago, even me!) unless they're warned in advance. So, here's your warning: 90% of the virus warning messages you receive will be, and are virus HOAXES. Most of them have been circulating for years, though not as far as YOU would know it ... and that's only because you haven't been on the Web long enough. And how do you keep from become one of the Chicken Little statistics? Fortunately, it's easy and doesn't require any modifications to your computer. But it DOES require a mindset adjustment. Before you allow yourself to succumb to that compulsive need to do that good deed and "help and warn" everyone, fall back to genealogy's cardinal rule and become the genealogist that you are (or are hoping to be): "Believe NONE of what you hear and only HALF of what you read. PROVE EVERYTHING!" By that I mean calm down, become the skeptic that you should be ~ remembering that (again) 90% of the virus warning messages you receive will be, and are virus HOAXES ~ and do some research... 1. Look for the common CAPITALIZED WORDS and those exclamation marks!!!! 2. The dire straits of the message, describing the virus as having horrid destructive powers ("crash your hard drive," etc.) often with the ability to send itself by email. 3. It's usually from an individual (the friend of my sister's brother-in-law, or some such strung-out relationship), sometimes from a company, but never from the cited source. 4. It says something like, "This is a new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it." 5. It urges you to alert eveyone you know, and usually tells you this more than once. There are other red flags to watch for, but those above are the most common ones. To make doubly sure, your next step should be to head for one of the following sites to see if it is indeed, a hoax: Symantec Virus Encyclopedia <http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/vinfodb.html/> CIAC Internet Hoaxes <ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html> Computer Virus Myths & Hoaxes <www.Vmyths.com> About.com Computer Virus Hoax Resources <urbanlegends.about.com/culture/urbanlegends/msubvir.htm> Urban Legends Reference Pages <www.snopes.com/> Widespread Virus Myths <www.stiller.com/myths.htm> I have Symantec heading the list intentionally. If you're sitting on an actual virus warning and not a hoax, I know for sure than Symantec will let you know. In my experience, the other sites deal primarily with hoaxes and urban legends as opposed to Symantec's real warnings and hoax alerts. TEN CLUES THAT YOUR COMPUTER MAY BE INFECTED I've told you about the viruses; I've told you how to safeguard your computer from them. However, not all computer glitches can be attributed to viruses. Sometimes freezes, crashes, or "general protection faults" are the result of normal operation, faulty hardware, programming errors, or insufficient memory; but some tell-tale events are almost always the result of a computer virus infestation. Below is a list of computer virus symptoms to watch out for: 1. Programs take longer to load. Memory-intensive operations take a lot of time to start or your hard drive operates constantly when you haven't asked it to open a file. 2. A change in dates against the filenames in the directory. When the virus modifies a file the operating system changes the date stamp. 3. The floppy disk or hard disk is suddenly accessed without logical reason. 4. Increased use of disk space and growth in file size (the virus attaches itself to many files). 5. Abnormal write-protect errors. The virus trying to write to a protected disk. 6. Strange characters appear in the directory listing of filenames. 7. Strange messages like "Type Happy Birthday Joshi" (Joshi Virus) or "Driver Memory Error" (kak.worm) appear on the screen and in documents. One virus will even try to "eat" the period typed into a DOS command line, as when you are trying to run a program like program.exe. 8. Strange graphic displays such as falling letters or a bouncing ball appear on screen. 9. Programs may cause the computer to get hung up or not work at all. 10. Junk characters overwrite text in document or data files. When dealing with viruses, remember that your knowledge is one of your computer's best defenses. You don't have to become an expert, but you should have a feeling for what viruses can and can't do. Keep your anti-virus software up-to-date, and keep good backups of all your data. FYI LINKS a. AN INTERESTING ARTICLE REGARDING SPAM Find out how a little of how the spammers got your email address at <http://www.msnbc.com/news/702322.asp?pne=11947>. b. ARE YOU GULLIBLE? Just for fun, take the test at <http://museumofhoaxes.com/test2.html> Family ... it's what we're all about. I so enjoyed spending this time with you today. Thank you for sharing it with me. I wish each of you a week filled with health, productivity, fun, and above all, filled with love and inner peace. ) ( ) _.-~~-. (@\'--'/. Colleen ('``.__.'`) `..____.'