For us the simple users of the web the question is how to survive the next virus attack? The best answer is not to allow a virus to infect our computer. There are few simple steps to follow in order to prevent the next uncontrolled attack.

Email viruses

Most of the viruses are designed for Microsoft based email client namely Outlook. If you have Windows based computer, then your computer came with a free version of Microsoft email client called Outlook Express. A virus comes attached to an email as an executable file, a file with .exe .doc .jpg .gif .tiff extensions, for example. As soon as an email with a virus is downloaded from a mail server your computer becomes infected. The "infection" may have many meanings. Some of the viruses work as a polite reminder proving that your computer is vulnerable. You may ask vulnerable to what? Vulnerable to more damaging attacks like erasing all the information from your hard disk or even worse damaging your hard disk. I've not come in contact with such viruses yet but they are coming. Other email viruses will try to send email to addresses found in your address book, to infect other computers.

To prevent an email attack we have few solutions. The one less expensive is to use one of the free web based email services like hotmail.com or yahoo.com which are UNIX based not Windows. Email would be accessed via web browser directly from the hosting company email server. The service can be used as a staging area before downloading checked email to your computer. One rule would be not to open attachments of unknown origin, even from the provider's server. Before an attachment is opened it is first downloaded to owners computer and this is enough to trigger the virus. A free email service offers only a few megabytes of storage, this is not enough to use the free mailbox to store all emails, unless you pay for additional space. There is a solution, after checking the email for viruses download it to your computer and erase it from the server.

The more expensive way to protect your computer against email viruses would be an antivirus software installed on your computer. Symantec.com is one of the most popular ( A new Intel in security software? ) There are less expensive solutions of the young and free, that allow to download a free trials that never expire: esafe.com. One word of caution, you need a constantly updated "virus definitions" file that changes almost every day, and this comes with paid subscription.

It is difficult to discover a computer infection. I would recommend downloading a trial version of an anti virus software from the web to scan your computer. zdnet.com, or google.com  are good starting points to search for reviews on virus protection software.

Try this anti-virus software, it is free: www.grisoft.com

There are many more solutions, which are less popular and less common. If you would like to contribute to this article please send email to support@applix.net

December, 2002
applix.net support

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