CyndisList-L Archives

From: Mark Howells <>
Subject: The Virus Season
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 22:20:18 -0800

Hi all -

Cyndi just pulled me away from a comfortable book to help her
remove a brand-new virus which arrived via her e-mail. It's one of
those Melissa copy-cats which relies on specific e-mail software
(Microsoft's Outlook) to propagate itself. As Cyndi doesn't use
Outlook, she wasn't spreading it to anyone else. As she keeps her
anti-virus software updated, Cyndi's PC has rarely been infected
with computer viruses over the last five years

Please remember that viruses are not spread via the RootsWeb
mailing lists. RootsWeb filters out attachments and 99% of all
e-mail borne viruses come as attachments. It will be your personal
e-mail correspondents who are likely to unknowingly send you a virus.

I thought I would take this opportunity to remind everyone that
between now and the first weeks of January, many old and new
viruses are expected to be triggered due to the Y2K roll-over and
just because the virus writers like to be nasty around the holidays.

Remember to avoid executing attachments which come in with your
e-mail. This is hard to remember during the holidays when so many
electronic greeting cards are sent as attachments but there is
always that chance that the attachment in actually a computer virus.

It is extremely important that you use an anti-virus product and
KEEP IT UPDATED. The particular virus which hit Cyndi was only
identified in Italy on December 14th and is now working its way
around the world. Our anti-virus software vendor (Norton) already
has a fix for the virus. We quickly downloaded Norton's latest
virus patterns and scanned our PCs to get rid of it.

I would heartily recommend that you regularly keep your anti-virus
software updated this holiday season to avoid any problems. The
two most common commercial anti-virus software vendors have free
online updates available to those who bought their software at

Norton:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/download.html

McAfee:
http://download.mcafee.com/updates/updates.asp

Update your virus patterns frequently during this holiday
season. For more information on computer viruses, see

Cyndi's List - Internet Stuff You Need To Know
http://www.CyndisList.com/internet.htm#Viruses

Good Hunting - Mark




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This thread:

• The Virus Season by Mark Howells <>