Something I’m curious about…I’m sure you’ve all received those emails “warning” you about viruses…and they always seem to turn out to be someones idea of amusement…well, how DOES one know what’s real and what’s not?
Good question, I havent had one in a while, and i dont care either, I delete any warnings I get, I have my virus scanner and stuff so nothings gonna get me, it updates itself every time I come online… i went for about 6 months without letting it update, then updated and I still had no viruses. To be honest I think viruses are 99% propaganhi. or something. I’m not worried either way.
For safety’s sake, just assume everything you hear about a virus is real. Most of the warnings are legit and just because you never get one doesn’t mean that they aren’t out there. Be watchful and don’t open anything from anyone that you don’t know. Its just good practice.
The best plan is to check out the warning. Use a search engine with the name of the “virus” as an argument. The last one I got was a hoax.
So, if you get a warning about a “doofus” virus, go to google and do a search on “doofus virus”, or just “doofus.” The big anti-virus labs maintain lists not only of legitimate viruses, but also of the hoaxes.
For the most part, virus warnings do not arrive by email, but rather are seen as news items on legitimate news sites.
Some of these warnings instruct you to remove files from your system, and that may be bad advice, so it’s always best to double-check before taking any action.
Remember, never open any email attachment which arrives from an unknown source AND be careful about any email attachment even from people you know.
Never open any attachment with an EXE, BAT, or COM extension, like JLopezNude.exe. Some attachments may look innocent at first glance, like PasswordTxt.exe
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Hi all,
I agree those virus warnings are pesky. I use Norton Antivirus 2002, and I enable the E-Mail scanning feature. Most of the viruses I get are caught by NAV on the fly so I don’t worry about not ‘opening’ attachments. I get about 10-15 e-mails containing the stupid Klez.32 virus and they vary from text files to pif (obvious virus) to JPEG and SWF (not a real SWF file).
Cheers,
Kirupa