About us > Where we meet | History | Eccentricities | Cardiff
The other week, Alan Thomas (or strictly speaking his computer) forwarded a virus to me. He had had an email with an attachment which contained a virus which mailed itself to everyone in his address book. It didn't go anywhere on from me. I should explain why.
Mostly, I still use Windows. I even still largely use Outlook Express (I *should* use Eudora, and probably will one day), but the mass of viruses bounce off. If you want a decent measure of protection when you use Windows, you should take the folowing precautions, but first you should get decent anti-virus software; nothing I will say now will change that.
Go to 'My Computer', look under 'Tools' -- there should be a choice called 'Folder Options', it may also be under 'Control Panel', look under view: there is a long list of checkboxes; you want to uncheck (by clicking in the box the option called 'Hide known file extensions'). Then click 'Apply' and 'OK'. This does not do anything to protect you outright. It does however, let you know if you get an email which contains a file with more than one extension, like the Kournikova one (which was kournikova.jpg.exe). Anything like this is suspicious, and should be deleted, or saved as text with just a .txt extension. Only the last extension tells the computer anything, everything before the final dot is just a name.
I got the next part of my cheap and cheerful security from Tourbus, a weekly or so email update of computer trivia and the occasional indispensable tip. The archived original article. By default, Outlook Express will just open and execute certain files. This may save you some effort; as the people who send such files tend to be malicious however, it's more likely to cause you lasting grief.
You need to disable a feature called 'Windows Scripting Host'. Find two files called 'WSCRIPT' and 'CSCRIPT', by using 'Find' (on the 'Start' menu). There may be more than one file starting with either name. Each time you find a file, I recommend that you rename it something quite different (in case something breaks and you need those files back, although I haven't after six months), and remember what you've called it. (You can rename files by clicking twice slowly on the file name, or right clicking and selecting 'rename'.) This will disable any files sent with mail from opening themselves, which at least gives you warning, so that you can delete them as explained above.
Together these steps at last give you the chance to inspect and decide if a mail is suspicious. As any virus program proves, copying files is extremely easy: so if you have any doubts, delete any unexpected attachments. If they were of any importance, the original sender can always send the file again. I don't accept attachments if they're not expected -- partly because people send nonsense like questionnaires, and partly because if someone needs to dress up a message with fatuous colours and ugly fonts, that message isn't worth reading.
About us > Where we meet | History | Eccentricities | Cardiff
Last updated 26 December 2005
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