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Viruses, Trojans and other Internet beasties!

Ah! Computer viruses! just the mere mention of the word sends people into panic! Well, not everything you heard about them is true. Read on and get educated:
common myths about viruses, what is a virus, types of viruses(worms, trojans horses or your ordinary computer virus), and how each one operates, anti-virus soft available, simple effective tips on how to protect yourself against them

Points to make:
1. viruses CANNOT launch themselves. They need to be started, by themselves viruses are just an inactive written code. You must activate them by either clicking on an .exe or .com by opening an infected doc and running a micro, by opening an inoccent looking e-mail attachment, or by sharing an infected floppy.
2. anti-virus companies, the media are in the bussiness of selling, be it news, software or info. You should rememeber that. Most of what they scream about viruses is hype, pure and simple.

There are generaly several types of computer viruses- worms, trojans horses or your ordinary computer virus. Just like you dont treat a viral infection with a drug meant for bacterial diseases, so it really helps to know what you are dealing with. Let's look at them in more detail:
A "pure" virus commonly shoves itself into program files. When the infected program runs, the viral code looks around and chooses other programs to infect. Viruses can do viraety of things from harmless like flashing a message on your screen to destroyng ALL the files or corrupting your BIOS so your PC can become useless.
A worm doesnt alter files -its goal is to duplicate itself. Worms do damage by consuming resources.
A trojan horse can seem to be doing something useful or fun- maybe a new free game or a nerw free screen saver, but while merrily running it can be chomping on your files or setting up a back door entry point on your net connection that enables intruders to access your system while you are online.
There is also: Polymorphic viruses that change(mutate) themselves just enough every time so your old anti-virus soft wont recognize them. Stealth viruses manage to make thwe anti virus soft think that all is well by holding on to information about the filres the virus has infected. It lurks, giving the antivirus program the old info rather than the new.

The simptoms of a viral infections are many. the most common are:

strange messages, images that appear on your display
unusal sounds or music played at random times
programs or files that are suddently missing, or their names or extentions have been changed/modified
unknown programs or files that have been created
less available memory than the system should have
some files have become corrpted and/or suddently do not work properly
a sudden system slowdown or a lot of seemingly random HD spinning
a disk or volume name has been changed or is missing

I know you most likely already run an anti-virus soft of some kind and constantly update it and worry about some unknown virus getting past its defences, but why dont you read http://kumite/myths and learn some of the myths and lies about computer viruses.
(their slogan is: Mundus vult decipi (the world wants to be deceived) and I totally agree)
You may also wanna modify your browsers and email programs not open and run multimedia atachments. For a very detailed instructions on how to do that read this link: geocities.com/CapitolHill/1236/nomime.html - how to remove the HTML, multimedia capabilities from email programs

Use your head and some common sence against viruses and some tried and true tips:

make sure all files show their extentions. Some clever virises can be named cutegirl.jpg while they are actually cutegirl.jpg.exe. By default, Windoze doesn't show extention so to change that, go to My Computer, View, Folder Options. Click on View tab and unclick the "Hide file extentions for known file types" box under Files and Folders. "
do ot have yor email or browser program set to open attached docs in Word. Using Visual Basic, a doc can be programmed to cause all sorts of havoc. If it's comign from someone you do not know, scan it first then open it using soemthign simple like WordPad or for Mac Simple Text. These settigns can be changed in each program's settings.
DO NOT run any unknown .exe or .com files you find on your machine that you dont rememeber d/ling.
When you d/l an email with an attachment, always scan it first BEFORE openning.
Do NOT borrow, copy floppies from school, work, ets. The sad truth is MOST viruses are spread that way. The only virus I ever got was when I used the PC at my school to copy a floppy and BAM! I got a virus on the floppy.
Stay away from warez sites offering free Net Bus, ets. Lots of times the soft from there is either infected or useless.
Turn OFF ALL Cookies, Java, Java Script, Active X on your browsers. yes, I know I am reapeating myself, but if a site NEEDS java or cookies I say "the hell with them!" and move on.
Realize MOST news about viruses is hype perpetuated by companies wanting to sell you MORE useless junk and act accordingly.

If you still want some links, all right, here they are:

the little known Anti-Viral Tookit from Central Command at www.avp.com is not a flashy program but it digs deep and checks your PC well. Just let it run overnight and you will be amased at what it finds. And they offer daily(yes, daily) updates to its virus definition database.
Then there are the usuall:
Symatec's Norton Anti-virus soft from www.symatec.com
Mcfee from www.mcfee.com

NOTE: for all these softs to work, they need to be constantly updated, which means visiting the manifacturer sute at least once a week nowdays and d/ling the new "definition" DAT files
Also, check VirusMD.com form some comprehansive info

Remember the hoopla when BubbleBoy came out? All the experts were predicting a flood of new terrible non stopable virues, because after all, you don't need to do ANYTHING and you an get infected by a computer virus. Bubbleboy was the proof. Funny how the expected flood of bad virues and hundreds of computers infected with a Bubbleboy-type viruses didn't materialize, did it?