Linda's Soapbox
~~
Editorial by
Linda Johnson
"Hey! You sent me a virus!!"
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been getting this kind of
email a lot lately. As if this computer of mine, which is tighter than
Fort Knox (see my last editorial), could possibly
have a virus in it. I'm surprised ANYTHING could live in this box.
But, alas, people do get viruses emailed to them and they do appear to come
from me.
"How so?", you ask....well, let me tell ya.
See, there's this critter that's alive and thriving on the web and he's
called a Worm. (Some recent ones that have been wreaking havoc are
known as klez and bugbear.) These worms work in
mysterious ways. What they do is crawl inside your email program and
stick their noses in your address book (Do worms have noses? Heck...I
don't know! This is just a story.) Anyway, they look in there
and say "Hmmmm...I think I'll grab one of them email addresses. That
fifth one from the bottom looks tasty." Then, they send themselves to
all the other addresses in that same address book and cloak themselves so it
seems they were sent by the address they chose and not from your address at
all.
Many email programs have a feature that you can enable that automatically
adds email addresses to your address book whenever you reply to someone's
email. (A feature I sure wish people would turn off!! Especially
people who don't care enough to keep their anti-virus software up to date...grrrrr).
So, since I have a website and many people write to me with their problems,
if I reply to these people and they then reply to me, I end up in their
address book. Then, one day, becuz they don't keep their AV software
up to date (or don't use AV software at all!) ol' klez or bugbear gets into
their computer and grabs my address and starts sending himself to the
hundreds of other people in their address book and then, these hundreds of
people write to me and scream at me that I've sent them a virus and
"Shouldn't I know better?" and they are going to report me to my ISP!!
Geeesh. Gimme a freakin' break here!
So. I've created a form letter that I now send in reply to these
complaints. It very cordially explains how this worm works and tells
them the plain fact: IF a worm is ever sent to you by me, it will
NOT have my email address on it. As a matter of fact, it's very
possible that the least likely person the virus came from is the one who
appears to have sent it to you.
What can we do about this? Well, if you are conscientious, you can
do three things:
- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE keep your virus definition files up to date!!
- And if you don't, at least PLEASE stop adding strangers to your
address books. It just ain't fair!
- Do NOT report people to ISPs unless you are absolutely, POSITIVELY,
100% sure they indeed are the ones who sent you a virus.
Do I sound miffed? Well, I am. Stuff like this makes me never
want to reply to mail sent to me by strangers again. Unless we ALL
start being responsible for our computers, stuff like this is gonna kill us,
ya know?
Be kind to strangers. Practice safe cyber.
Happy Computing!
Linda
Linda Johnson is a
college instructor of all of the Microsoft Office Programs, as well
as Adobe PhotoShop and Windows. She also teaches online distance
learning classes in Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word at
Eclectic Academy. She has worked helpdesk and teaches
and lectures at many local businesses and tech schools in her area. Support this
newsletter by checking out Linda's eBooks, MS Word MAGIC!, Book
I: Fonts, Fun & Formats and Book
II: Table Wizardry,
How
To Get Started As a Software Trainer, and
her newest series of MSOffice
eBook Tutorials and CD
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