MAJOR VIRUS ALERT

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It just came to my attention that there is a new major virus spreading like greased wildfire around the globe. For now it comes in saying: "Hi. How are you? When I saw this screen saver, I immediately thought about you I am in a harry, I promise you will love it." The misspellings are part of it. To be safe run your anti virus up date now and again tomorrow; in Norton go to the start/logo page, click start, click on Norton system works, click on "one button scan" and then on (green) begin scan box; if it uncovers anything click begin fix; if it advises you to run live update, click on live up date and wait. If it finds a virus you are tagged. Return to Norton home page, click on Norton anti virus box, then click on scan for virus, this can take from 10 minutes to 4 hours depending what is in your puter. When the scan finishes it will list virus sites found. Write these down exactly as presented if you do not know how to purge your system, save them for an expert to deal with.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), December 05, 2001

Answers

OH NO!!! Not again... Everyone please be careful about opening those e-mails!

-- Melissa (me@home.net), December 05, 2001.

Why not just exercise just a little basic common sense? Don't open any attachments unless you know who sent them and were expecting them or you have confirmed with them that they sent it and that they originated it (in other words, that it's their work and not a forward of something from someone else). That simple thing will prevent problems for you.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), December 05, 2001.

Hmm, How many times does a virus have to affect machines using holes in outlook, outlook express or explorer before people decide that these programs are poorly written with no hint of securityin them.

-- Gary (gws@columbus.rr.com), December 06, 2001.

My machine got the hamster virus. It was from one of our state historic sites that I email regularly. Just a word of caution if it doesn't have a subject in it don't open it. If it's an RE from someone you didn't send an email too. don't open it. once you click on it your machine is infected. Pleas be Careful. If you are not expecting attachments don't open them. And if you are run a scan check anyway.

-- melinda (speciallady104@hotmail.com), December 06, 2001.

In answer to Gary's post about not opening attachments, it's not that easy any more. It is now possible to have the virus as part of the email itself, so opening of the email can let the virus loose on you.

A good rule of thumb is to A) not open anything if you don't recognize the sender, and B) Do not open anything you weren't expecting.

I know this seems a bit over the top, but I'd rather have someone say , "Hey, did you get that email", and have to say "No, resend it please" than lose everything I have stored in memory and risk passing it on to others.

Trust me, if it's important, you'll hear about it.

-- Tracy (trimmer31@hotmail.com), December 12, 2001.



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