----- Original Message ----- From: "Gail Meyer Kilgore" <gkilgore@primenet.com> To: <KILGORE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 4:16 PM Subject: [KILGORE] Address Book-ONE MORE TIME! > This was sent to me by Diane on one of my lists and it might work and it > sure won't hurt to try it. > > Trick your address book! I've seen this tip on another message list. It is of minimal effectiveness for a couple reasons: 1) Some virus writers make their viruses either skip the first entry or pick one at random. 2) Some viruses include their own email posting client software that they use so that the messages they send do not show up in the Outbox or in the Sent Items folder and so that they can quietly handle errors to prevent the user from becoming aware that they are infected. 3) Some viruses ignore the address book and simply send copies to the addresses harvested from incoming email. This is the form of virus that keeps showing up in my Inbox from infected people subscribed to mailing lists that I post to. The first line of defense to prevent viruses is don't open every attachment that shows up in your Inbox. If you get strange messages about "Snowhite and the Seven Dwarves" or with a body that simply says "See to the attachment" or the attachment filename is something like "Me Naked", don't open it. It is obviously a virus. Most of these attachment viruses are so obvious that anyone who gets infected by them deserves to have their HD erased to teach them a lesson in being a little more prudent. There are also some viruses that are more advanced, requiring additional precautions. The KaK worm is an example of a virus that passes itself through the body of an HTML email message itself without having to open any attachments at all. This problem was fixed a long time ago. Everyone with Win98 or later should be sure to use the Windows Update feature regularly to ensure that this any many other security holes are plugged. A good Virus checker with regular virus definition updates will help detect viruses and try to prevent you from running an infected program, but they won't be able to detect brand new viruses for at least a couple days after they are released until the anti-virus companies figure out the proper steps t detect and removal the new virus and you update the definitions. Also, if you have been following the other precautions above, the virus program should become a redunant backup that, hopefully, ends up never getting a chance to do its thing. One more backup precaution is to use the free personal firewall program ZoneAlarm < www.zonealarm.com >, which prevents unauthorized Internet access both in and out of your computer and also includes a mail safe feature, which renames the extentions on potentially dangerous attachments so that you cannot execute them accidently. ZoneAlarm also has other even more useful benefits such as helping to prevent SpyWare programs from phoning home and also puts your computer into "stealth mode" to prevent hackers from finding your computer and trying to break in for some nefarious purpose such as using thousands of hacked computers together to launch denial of service attacks against web sites. One last thing that doesn't really have anything to do with viruses, but will help stop the annoying GoHip advertising (IMO virus) program is Proxomitron < www.proxomitron.cjb.net >. But the best reason to use Proxomitron is not for virus-prevention. The best reason is because Proxomitron is because it helps filter out annoying advertising from web sites. Note: This program requires configuration to work properly and is recommended for advanced users. You can use your computer's Hosts file to block the gohip web site, ad farm sites and other offending web sites entirely so that you will never again have to look at a banner ad, but this is also recommended only for advanced users.