Virus protection is a must for any computer system. This is a very simple statement that really needs no explanation but here I go anyway. If you choose not to have an antivirus program installed on your system, you are putting your system at risk as well as all of the people’s computers that you interact with. This would include people that you exchange e-mails with as well as people that are connected to you through a network at work or at home. It is not enough to just have an antivirus program installed on your system. Most of the systems that are being sold today come with a trial version of either Norton or McAfee Antivirus. This trial version usually entitles you to free upgrades and updates for the first three months after you register the program. This can be taken care of through the Internet. After the trial period there will be a charge to continue with the upgrades and updates. These updates will cost you about $30 a year but as we have discussed in the past, this is a small price to pay for the protection.

Whichever brand you choose whether it be Norton, McAfee, Panda or any of the many other programs that are available, be sure that you register the software and get the updates so that you will be protected from the all the viruses that are in the wild. If you simply install the program you can be as much as 6 months behind in the definitions. This would leave your system vulnerable to hundreds of viruses that have been written since the program was packaged and shipped out from the company. I think that if you have your antivirus program check for updates once a week, you will be relatively safe. If you have a broadband connection the update will only take about 30 seconds. If you have a dialup, the wait will be closer to 30 minutes since the updates are getting very close to 5MB. Even so if you schedule the update for the middle of the night you won’t even know or care that the update is being done and you will always be up to date. Always is such a big word. Be sure that you take the time to check your virus software to be sure that you have the updates. You want to see that the updates are being applied to be sure that you have set up the scheduler and updater correctly. You don’t want to get caught up in a false since of security because you thought you had it set up correctly and you actually missed one small checkbox that tells the program to do the updates without asking you first.

After you have your virus protection installed and up to date you will need to take some time at a couple of Microsoft sites if you are using any of their software. This would include Internet Explorer, Office and any of the Windows versions past 3.1x. There are a number of viruses that have hit the Internet recently that have spread very quickly because of the holes in various Microsoft products. Nimba is an example of a fast spreading virus that has done a lot of damage in the last couple of months. The problem with this is that while Nimba was discovered the middle of September 2001, Microsoft had released the fix for Web Traversal back on October 17, 2000. This is only one of many examples of fixes that have been available before the viruses became widespread. The reason that it has spread so quickly is because so many people have not applied the patches to keep their software up to date. There is also a patch for Microsoft Outlook that will stop the threat of receiving potentially dangerous attachments but it has been slow getting people to apply this one as well. Microsoft has finally added an option in Outlook Express 6 that will allow you to cut off access to these same types of attachments.

Updates to your Windows operating system as well as Internet Explorer can be obtained free of charge at the Web site.  Microsoft Office 2000 and XP updates can be obtained from office.microsoft.com. The Web page will install an ActiveX program on your system that will check your software to see if the updates are applicable to your system and if the updates have been applied. You will then be given a list of updates that are available for you based on the software that you have installed. All of the systems that are using Internet Explorer should be updated to a minimum of 5.5 sp2, which is available at the Windowsupdate site. There is also an update that is available that will check the site and display a notice on your screen whenever a new Critical update has been posted. This will help to make the task of keeping your system up to date a little easier because you will no longer have to remember to check for the updates. I have not found anywhere on the Office site that will alert us to updates that need to be done. Downloads for earlier versions of Outlook and Office can be found at download.microsoft.com. You will need to do a little searching but they are all available from this one page.

Now that I have gotten my blood pressure up with all of this virus talk, let’s move on to a few of the more mundane items that will allow our computers to live a long and happy life. Make sure that you have an adequate surge suppressor to plug your system in to. Any good surge suppressor should have a UL listing on the back of it to assure you that you are getting a quality product that will actually help to protect your system. I would also suggest that you have a suppressor that has plugs for your phone cord. This will help to suppress the surges that could pass through your phone line and blow your modem.

Next let’s see if we can get some of you in the habit of cleaning the inside of your computer a little more often than not at all. If you use some sort of calendar program I would suggest that you pick a date and add the chore of blowing the dust out of your system to some sort of recurring task list. A can of compressed air can be bought at most electronic stores in town as well as some of the mass retailers. Depending on how tight the seals on your windows are and how well you clean, you should be able to get away with cleaning your system out once every six months. If the six months passes and the dust is so thick you need a mask then try moving up to every three months. If there is little or no dust inside then you have a very clean house or office and you can probably leave your chore as a yearly duty. This will help your system to run faster since the dust will make the fan on your CPU and power supply less effective. Less effective fans lead to higher temperatures and heat will make your system run slower.

Now on to something that I hope to rid the world of — people that do not know what they are talking about giving other people that do not know any better, bad advice. I have received e-mails from a number of people in the past few months asking whether the following e-mail sounds like a good idea and whether or not it would actually work. Here is the beginning of the e-mail and then we discuss why this is one of the most foolish ideas that I have heard of in a long time.
 

There are a number of reasons that this will fail and the first one is the amount of time that it is going to take you to get the e-mail saying that the e-mail to !000 did not get through. Then there will be the seconds that it takes you to react to what you have received. Even if you have Outlook checking for mail constantly, the worm is sending itself in milliseconds while you are deciding what to do. What do you do? For your information you would need to pull the phone or network connection from the back of your computer.

There a number of other variations of the e-mail that state that because of this contact the virus will not have a valid e-mail address and will stop sending from that point on. I can tell you for a fact, that is not the case. I have seen these returned messages to Contacts in Outlook that did not have e-mail addresses listed. These were the ones that were returned as undeliverable but there were a lot more in the sent box that did make it through. The other problem is that some of the viruses such as SirCam run there own SMTP server so that keeping an eye on Outlook would not do any good. None of the e-mail messages that SirCam sends show up in Outlook. Some of the worms do not even use the address book. SirCam is one that will also search your Internet Web cache for e-mail addresses to send to. Other viruses will simply pick and choose from the address book.

I would not recommend this idea to anyone even as a warning system. It will only warn you about a few of the worms that could infect your system and it might give you a false sense of security. Install a good quality virus protection program and keep it up to date. Go to the Microsoft Website and update your browser and Office programs. There is no easy way out of the predicament that we have gotten ourselves into. Take a proactive step in the fight to keep your computer free of viruses. If not for yourself then do it for the rest of us.