By Suzann Dodd, Contributor"OH NO!" said the department head, "it can't be a virus! We just purchased new detection software last month!"
The reason malware (various forms of evil which get into your computer, only some are correctly called virus), is so dangerous is that every day someone is creating a new one.
That version of F-Prot, which found all those viri in October of '97, was obsolete by January. Not just weak, but virtually useless (unless you happened, in January 1998, to pick up a virus that was created in September 1997).
The tragedy of malware (worms, trojan horses, viruses, etc.) is that just about every non-nerd believes running the handy-dandy virus prog that came with the computer at every boot isa life time protection.
You can protect your computer by never putting any media into it, i.e. diskettes, never looking onto the Internet, and not letting Forge sneeze in the same room, but then, it becomes more of a paper weight than a computer.
For those who don't use Linux, (which is virtually bullet proof) all you can do is show a little common sense.
When you put something into your computer, unless you can certify it's safety, you run a risk. When you log onto the Internet and download mail, unless you certify if first, you run a risk.
In the old days I used to set my computer to automatically download mail from my ISP. No one had that address except those I gave it to and I was pretty safe.
I used spam boxes every time I joined anything, and when my ISP was sold, stopped downloading mail.
What I do is log on, bring up all half dozen of my spam boxes, log off, and go down the headers, deleting between 95 per cent 100 per cent of all e-mail as I don't need to see naked teenagers, am not looking for a credit card, a mortgage and know I didn't win nothing.
At the end of the day I'll have my headlines from the BBC, my notifications of messages in the various forums I participate in, and a few notes from people with whom I actually want to communicate.
I set my browsers to alert me for every possible discrepancy, from attachments to downloads to the url being different from the purported address.
I picked up Anti-Cmos viruses about a dozen times, but as I don't use Windows it had to sit and suffer impotence, because it's one of the 99.999999 per cent of viruses that does not work unless you use Windows.
To rely on the virus protection you brought last month is like attempting to use Wednesday's lotto ticket to pick up the jackpot on Saturday's draw. It is not going to work.
Suzann Dodd is a writer and an attorney.
