Re: responding to virus question

[Barbara Braxton <barbara@AUSTARMETRO.COM.AU>]

Dear Carol and others
The particular worm that is doing the rounds at the moment is a nasty little
nasty which infects a computer and then sends messages to all those people
whose messages are unopened in that particular inbox.  So it may not be the
person who appears to be the sender who has the infected machine.

Let's say Mary's computer has no virus protection and she gets the worm in
her email and activates it through ignorance.  Now in her inbox are unopened
messages from Bill, Ben, Bob and Barbara so the worm crawls into those and
sends a message back complete with its offspring.  Bill, Ben and Bob have
virus protection so even tho they may open the email it is 'caught' and they
can delete it or whatever and it is stopped in its tracks.  But Barbara has
ignored all the warnings about virus protection and not opening attachments
and so forth so the cycle starts again.  And if she has 100 unopened emails
.....

So it may not be the apparent sender of the message who has an infected
machine but someone who had an unopened email from them. And if you belong
to a listserv such as this, there could be dozens of unopened messages ...
someone may even have received this worm from you (or at least, that is how
it appears) because yours was one of those unopened emails in an infected
inbox.

Outlook and Outlook Express are the key targets because so many people
throughout the world use these two packages.

So up-to-date virus protection is critical - and it needs to be updated
regularly.  I know so many people who have bought a computer with AV
software installed and they think that's it!  They don't realise that there
are crackpots creating these things every other day and whilst they have
immunity from a,b.& c when they bought the computer they don't realise that
two weeks later they also need immunity from x, y, & z.  To update your
virus protection, right click on the icon for the program down near your
clock to open it, and then follow the instructions.

I hope that answers your questions about how this thing is working -
remember, it is not necessarily the apparent sender of the message who has
the infected machine.

Kia ora
Barbara

Barbara Braxton
Teacher Librarian
Palmerston District Primary School
PALMERSTON ACT 2913
AUSTRALIA

T. 02 6205 7241
F. 02 6205 7242
E. barbara@austarmetro.com.au
W. http://www.palmdps.act.edu.au

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