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Featured Article: By: Chris Klasinski
Viruses, Trojans and Other Vermin

This is going to be a multi-part series on a subject that everyone who
trolls the web should be aware of.

In the last few weeks I have seen more and more virus and worm
attacks from infected e-mails that are coming in as attachments with
little or no subject line, and little to no content in the body of the
e-mail.

What is a Virus?

It is a small nasty program that comes into your computer via an e-mail
or an infected site. It can destroy just part of your Operating System or
all of it.

So the first line of defence is to install a top notch anti-virus software.

I use Norton and Fran uses AVG. There are other very good ones out on
the net. Please see this list of resources at the bottom.

The next line, when you do have the software installed, is to keep it
updated all the time ... every two to three days, NOT WEEKS!!

Now for those of you who were on the web on Saturday 25 January 03,
that was not a totally bad day. What I mean is, things got slow...
downloads, surfing, the such. But you were not dead in the water. You
still could get around and you were not left looking at the dreaded 'blue'
screen..

Another point I have to make right now is have everything configured
properly. That is, keep settings at the "medium" security settings so
that you block all the nasty stuff, but not every thing that might be
construed as a virus as it would if you have your settings on "high".

Another line of defence is to keep update to date on all the actual
viruses and such, and beware that there are 'hoaxters" out there in
cyberland that love to convince you that some vital registry item is
a virus, when it is not.

Often times, removing this registry entry will confuse your operating
system and certain programs will no longer operate properly. In the
extreme, removal of these registry items will crash your computer.

A complete security and privacy solution. If you expect
to survive today's onslaught of virus, hacker, spy ware
threats and "super cookies" -- you need a complete solution.
How well do you protect your computer? Get your FR*E
CD with 100% live results.

http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=56506

Tips Insights: Copy, Cut & Paste

If there is a better way to save time and space on your computer
then these three little buddies, let me know.

Their uses are innumerable and everyone does need to know how
to use them eventually.

Let's do a little practice lesson here. Type out two sentences of
your choice in notepad or some other text editor of your choice..
make sure they are a line space or two apart. Now try this.

Simply hold down your left button [forefinger:>)] on your mouse
at the beginning of the first sentence and drag the mouse along
until the end of the sentence and let go. The sentence should be
darkened or highlighted as we call it.

RIGHT click [your ring finger;>)] on the highlighted sentence.
A menu will open and you will have several choices. This time,
select 'copy.' Move on down the page a bit . Hit enter two or
three times to get there. [or use your mouse if you are good at
this.] Do a LEFT click on this spot and a menu will open. Click
on 'paste' and you will see the sentence copied in this spot.

You have just done a simply copy and paste and used notepad as
well. Good work! :>)

Now let's do another step. Highlight that sentence you just copied.
Do a right click on it. This time select 'cut.' What happened?
The text disappeared ..right?

Now you can move above the other sentence and do this: Right
click. When the menu appears, select paste. The sentence you
'cut' now reappears in its original place.

Once you are comfortable using the above, you will find loads of
ways to save bits and bites of valuable information you can use
at a later date, you can save in files and folders, without the
whole article or e-mail having to be saved.

John's Email Adventures

My friend John likes to surf the net. He isn't fussy about the sites
he visits. He just loves to be entertained for the moment. He isn't
looking for anything in particular. He just clicks on and on and on
and on.

Mary calls him long distance to tell him their Mom is very ill and
is in the hospital. Why didn't he answer her e-mail?

An exasperated John asks what e-mail? There was no e-mail for
him from Mary. Angrily, Mary informs him that she sent him two
emergency e-mails and had waited for his reply before calling him.

Upset, John goes into his hotmail account. It is full up and there
is a warning that his account is too large that he may not be
receiving sent e-mails.

As he glances down the subject lines, to his horror, he finds 75%
of them are offers of illicit sex, links to porn sites, and advertising
from companies for products he know he has never asked for.

For the next half hour John busily reads each subject line and
checks the box in front then hits the delete key. Out of the 100s of
e-mails that bounced his account, John finds less than 10 that he was
expecting.

Just as suddenly there is a sudden influx of more e-mails. E-mails
that were waiting on the server spool and his box is half full again.
There at the bottom are the two e-mails from Mary.

John is new to the Internet and very new to using e-mail accounts.
To avoid the garbage in, garbage out e-mails, John realized he was
going to have to make some serious changes in his habits.

The first thing John did was to read the headings across his e-mail
account. Here he found one heading reading 'Options' and clicked
on it.

The options page opened a whole slew of new ideas on ways he
could use his e-mail account effectively. John looked over all the
headings and selected one.

A simple click on 'filters' and John learned how to create a separate
junk mail folder for most of the e-mails sent to him that he did not
have an entry for for in his address list.

Now that meant that John would have to enter the e-mail addresses
of all his family and friends that he did wish to accept e-mail from or
they would end up in the 'junk' folder.

He investigated the 'block' sections and found a way to enter the
e-mail addresses of people sending him e-mail he did not wish to
receive. John felt so much better. Now he was on a roll! Now he felt
he wouldn't miss anymore important e-mails no matter who they were
from.

He even clicked on 'signature file' and created a fun one to add to his
e-mails that he sent out to friends.

When John went back to his inbox he suddenly realized that these
changes would only take effect on future incoming e-mails. The
changes he made did not affect the e-mails already in his account.

While John was happy he would be solving future problems, he still
had to deal with the current flood of unrequested e-mails the Internet
referred to as sp*am.

He still wasn't feeling too good about having missed those two very
important e-mails from Mary concerning his Mother's health so he
made another mistake.

He opened a suggestive e-mail with a subject line inviting him to a
porn site.

Now most of these e-mails come from what is called a 'bounce'
account and you cannot reply to them because the sender is no
longer exists there.

Two things could happen to John. The reply could be lost in cyber
space or bounce back to the e-mail account even more.

John picked a good one to reply to. It actually had an e-mail return
address that was real. John wrote a scathing letter to the sender
and demanded that they no longer send him their garbage.

Feeling better, John deleted the message. He tried the same
approach with each of the porn sites, then moved on to the unwanted
advertisements.

Feeling much better about gaining control of his e-mail account, John
took a moment to scroll down through these advertisements and
learned that each of them contained a link near the bottom suggesting
that if he received these e-mails in error, all he had to do was click on
the link provided and he would be removed from their lists.

With a sigh of relief, John did so on every unsolicited e-mail.

John returned from a two day visit with his Mom and sister Mary,
to find his e-mail account was flooded once more.

His inbox only contained two e-mails but his junk folder contained
100s of unwanted porn all from one person.

John learned a bitter lesson. It is simply best to delete garbage in,
empty the junk folder religiously and forget about sending nasty
replies to the senders.

The receiver of one of his nasty replies had sent him the same email
100s of times until his junk folder was so full, his whole e-mail account
bounced once more.

Another lesson John learned is that most of the other nasty e-mails
he sent to the other porn sites in his account were to no reply/bounce
accounts and every one of them showed up in his junk folder as
undeliverable.

For two more days, John religiously deleted his junk folder and for
both of those days, this same e-mail sender kept bouncing his e-mail
account.

Finally, John marked the sender as 'not a junk message' and once it
showed up in his inbox, John added the address displayed in the block
sender file.

Now the e-mail sent by this irate person would no longer show up in
his e-mail inbox or his junk folder. John smiled, he had learned
another lesson in e-mail control as well as in his own personal
response to such garbage.

Resources:

Go to your virus protection company and check their files of the
latest hoaxes on the net. If it is not there then check it out with
hoax busters such as:

Norton: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html

Other Hoax Resources:

http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.snopes.com/ http://www.snopes.com/
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
http://hoaxbusters.org/

Virus Checkers:

For all intents and purposes, there are three well recognized virus
checkers on the market.

AVG FR*E download
http://www.grisoft.com

Norton Anti virus:
http://www.symantec.com/nav/

McAfee Security
http://www.mcafee.com/

[InnoculateIT ( http://antivirus.cai.com [FREE]

Each have their good points and each have drawbacks.

You are wise to investigate all three and then make
a decision as to which one you will use.

Point of Information: It is no good choosing one,
installing it and then forgetting it. Each program
offers benefits that must be chosen by you to enable.

Each program needs to be scheduled for daily checks
on your computer as well as verify the safety of
incoming/outgoing e-mails. And most importantly,
each one needs to be scheduled to regularly perform
updates within a specified number of days.

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Contact Information:
Chris and Fran Klasinski
107-50 Trip Blvd
Trenton, Ontario Canada K8V 5Z7
(613) 394-0868 EST (GMT-5)