Protecting your computer

I recently received the following message.

How to  protect your e-mail address book.  This is good. My daughter told me
about  this long ago but when I started a new list I forgot to do it.  Now
you  will be safe if I get infected.

A computer repairman says this is like having  gold.  This is a good thing.
I learned a computer trick  today that's really ingenious in its
simplicity.

As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets  into your computer it heads
straight for your email address book, and sends itself to everyone  in
there, thus infecting all your friends and  associates.

This trick won't keep the  virus from getting into your computer, but it
will stop it from using your  address book to spread further, and it will alert
you to the fact that the  worm has gotten into your  system.

Here's what you do:
First, open your address  book and click on 'new contact,' just as you would
do if you were adding a  new friend to your list of email addresses.  In the
window where you  would type your friend's first name, type in '  A'.

For the screen name or  email address, type _AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA_
(mailto:AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA)

Now, here's what  you've done and why it works:
The 'name 'A' will be placed at the top of  your address book as entry #1.
This will be where the  worm will start in an effort to send itself to all
your  friends.
When it tries to send itself to  _AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA_ (mailto:AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA)
it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address  you entered.
If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the  phony address),
the
worm goes no further and none of your friends will  be infected.
Here's the second great  advantage of this method:  If an email cannot be
delivered, you  will be notified ofthis in your In Box almost immediately.
Hence, if you ever get  an email telling you that an email addressed
to_AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA_ (mailto:AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA)  could not be delivered, you
know right away
that you have the  worm virus in yoursystem.  You can then take steps to get
rid of  it!

This suggestion is non-sense.

1) Your email program will only be able to check for properly formed email
addressess, 'x@xxx.xxx' and the one given here is properly formed.

2) No email sender knows whether or not a given address really has a recipient
and can only be notified of this when the message fails to find its goal,
sometimes, hours or days after it is sent.

3) Few viruses search and use an email list of addresses sequentially, but pick
them at random.

4) Most viruses don't use your regular email program anyway as they usually
contain the ability to send them out themselves, and moreover, no virus
writer is going to go to the trouble to write a program which would be so
easily foiled. They try to anticipate and get around any possible obstacle.


I wrote most of the above from my own experience, but added to it by
checking various sources.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/v/virustip.htm and

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/quickfix.asp

The best protection against viruses is a good anti-virus program. I have
used the free version of Avast for several years and can freely recommend
it. There are others, but I can't recommend them from personal experience.


http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html will download the free
Home version.

Another good thing is to have good anti-malware detection and cleaning
software. I have used Spybot, A-Squared, Adware and others over the years,
(all the free versions), and have no complaints. The most recommended one
that I have starting using recently is MalwareBytes. It too has a free
version. (As you might notice, I don't particularly care to purchase such
things when the free ones do the job pretty well, just lacking a few bells
and whistles.)

SpyBot:

http://download.cnet.com/Spybot-Search-amp-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10122137.html

Adware:

http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php

A-Squared:

http://download.cnet.com/A-squared-Free/3000-2239_4-10262215.html

Window Defender:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx

MalwareBytes:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

Super-SpyWare:

http://download.cnet.com/Super-Spyware-Remover/3000-8022_4-10320005.html

A good firewall is very helpful. Windows Firewall doesn't protect against
outgoing attempts, but only blocks incoming stuff, so that if a malware
program slips by other protection, it won't prevent it from doing it's dirty
work. The one I use was discontinued a number of years ago, but is still 
available as a download from 

http://download.cnet.com/Sygate-Personal-Firewall/3000-2092_4-10049526.html

You can also, buy a hardware firewall. Check with a local computer store or
one of the big chains, Office Depot etc. I have no idea of the cost of such 
as I have one that I received as part of my old job and it is still functioning.
A combination of software firewalls as well as hardware firewalls isn't a bad
idea.

One other word of caution. Users should always be wary of searching the internet
for programs such as these as there are a number of sites out there which try to 
spoof you with such things and actually are sources of infection themselves. 
That's why I have tried to give you a list of known good stuff.

An additional subject is Spam. The best anti-Spam program that I have
found is SPAMfighter. And it is the one case where I pay for it. It costs
$29.00 a year for subscription. They maintain a user base of several million
users and whenever you get spam, you block it and it automatically sends a
report to them. After they check out your report and collated it with all of
the others, the sender is automatically added to there blocked list and
everything coming in from sender gets automatically sent to a folder out of
the way, where you can check it and/or delete it without having it
automatically open. Personally, I have never found anything valid in the
folder and so I just purge everything there without checking.

http://www.spamfighter.com/

Their information is also passed along to the major anti-spam organizations 
and these, in turn, notify email providers who can then add the results to 
their own blocking.

Feel free to pass on anything in this message, and if you have any problems
along this line, don't hesitate to ask me .

Email: David Wright