The Virus Threat

Lesson 3: Safe Computing Practices

Internet guidelines

The Internet is now the most common way for a virus to spread. Internet downloads and email attachments account for over 90% of all viruses. While a good virus detection program will protect you from known viruses, and a good number of unknown viruses, it is a good idea to be careful regardless, no virus detection program is perfect. There are some guidelines you can follow to minimize your risk of infection:

• Never accept an email attachment from someone you don't know, delete any emails with attachments from anyone you don't know.
• Never accept email attachments from people you do know that didn't tell you before hand that they were sending it, do not assume that they intended to send you the message just because the email claims that they sent it, if you receive an attachment that you were not informed of ahead of time call the person and ask them what the attachment is.
• Do not download password cracking programs, or game cheat programs. Almost every one of these contains back door trojan horses.
• Do not download any programs from non-reputable web sites.
• Do not download software patches from any site other than the software manufacturers or approved vendor.
• If you use ICQ, MSN, mIRC, or similar chat programs make sure you have a firewall program.
• Never accept an executable program from anyone on ICQ, MSN, mIRC or such chat programs.
• Keep your virus scanner up to date.
• Keep your web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, etc.) and email program (Outlook Express, Eudora, etc) Patched up. If you have a fully patched system an email virus cannot infect your system when you simply read an email, you have to actually run the attachment, however there was an autoexecuting feature in Outlook Express that allowed viruses to automatically run themselves as soon as the email was opened. If you have a fully patched system this is not a problem.
• Run frequent full scans.

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