Job Discussion Forums

[cimarch]

A couple of people have received e-mails from me that I did not send. I believe someone has harvested my e-mail address and either gained access to my account or is using some sort of emulator program to make it appear that they come from me and is using it to spread viri.

I do not, and never have, email(ed) people directly. Any communications you will receive from me will come by PM. If you receive an e-mail from my address, [email protected], then please delete it immediately.

Thank you

p.s. I believe a similar thing occurred recently with Mr. Sperling's e-mail.

[Sinobear]

Or...

You're using an infected machine that's using your outlook addresses to propagate itself.

If you don't have a good (or up-to-date) antivirus program, try going to
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter
They have a free antivirus/worm/trojan checker.


Cheers!

[cimarch]

Yeah, I thought of that but I run two anti-virus programs, one continually in the background and have a firewall. My e-mail it totally web-based, I don't use Outlook at all.

Always good to have another AV program though...

[guest of Japan]

Sinobear, which link on the website gives the free anti-virus service? Everything I click either wants money now or soon.

[Stephen Jones]

go to www.grisoft.com and download AVG6.0 free version. You have to do a little digging for it, but it's completely free, and you can update daily. I've been using it for five years.

You shuld also go to www.zonelabs.com and download the free version of Zone Alarm internet firewall.

And, less important once you have the other two installed, go to www.lavasoft.com and download the free version of adaware to clean your machine of spyware.

All are free, and your machine will be pretty well protected.

[guest of Japan]

Thank you Stephen Jones.

[Sinobear]

GOJ: Use this link
http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/default.asp?productid=symhome&langid=ie&venid=sym

Symantec is the producer of Norton Antivirus. This scanner is the most comprehensive and thus could take a while if you have a large hard drive.

Cheers!

[China Dim Drone]

Come off it, this is just your chance to show that you know the plural of virus, wasn't it? Anyway, you shouldn't run two anti-virus packages; in fact, I do not believe any would permit you to load a second package. I think also you are confused with Worms, Trojans, and "viri". In addition, all because people say they have got emails from you does make it so! Have they checked their logs? Such "emails" (or rather, records thereof) can actually be generated by and within the (affected) email software package itself (the address is simply read from the address book). Also, given that you have your email address here on a public forum, it does not surprise me that you have suffered in this fashion. There are spiders that crawl the Internet searching for all characters before and after any "@" symbols (a mere four lines of coding) so that the email addresses can be added automatically to spam lists. This is why people increasingly write their address with spaces either side of the symbol (or simply write 'at').

[Seth]

anthony, old bean, i've been wondering where you've been

[Stephen Jones]

You shouldn't be running two real time scanners; apart from possible interferences, where each one takes the other to be a virus, there would be a hefty performance hit.

However there is nothing stopping you from having more than one anti-virus installed, using one as the real time scan, and then turning it off and using the other to do a full disk manual scan daily. Or you can have a real time virus scan running and then go to a web based anti-virus, such as Symantec or Trend, and get them to do a scan.

This will catch any viruses that the other program misses, though frankly most programs are so good, or so aggressive, that this is unlikely to be a problem.

[dmb]

I only use Norton. Is this enough?

[Stephen Jones]

As long as you update the definitions daily, then one anti-virus is enough.

But you also need a firewall. I am on a dialup line and there are fifty illicit attempts to access my computer every hour.

The average time an unpatched computer could be on the net before it was comp[romisedwas twenty minutes; that was a year ago, and it would probably last less time now.

One of the big dangers is that you install windows and then go to the Internedt to get the security updates, but before you can download them you have already become infected with blaster worm, and/or a slew of others. The answer of course is to have an up-to-date computer to do the downloads, save the downloads to disk, and then update the newly installed computer.

So the answer to your question is you need three things at the very minumum.

An anti-virus program, updated daily.
A firewall.
All the current windows updates.

An anit-spyware solution is also a good idea, particullarly if you are paranoid.

[cimarch]

As I said, I run two anti-virus programs. One in the background, one once a week to pick up anything the main one misses. And I have all the latest patches installed. This isn't the first time it's happened to me either, that's why I have heavy protection. I find the majority of the problems occur when my wife uses it to surf Chinese sites.

The reason I posted this was because three people (four now) associated with this particular site (none of whom I have ever contacted and none of whose e-mail addresses are in my address book) received e-mails saying they came from my address. I know it because I have received PMs from two of them and returned e-mails from the others.

Just a little Public Service Announcement.

p.s. Shouldn't every English teacher know the plural of virus?

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[cimarch]

I stand corrected

Something new every day...