I’ve gotten a ton of email from recipients who say that I sent them email containing the virus. It ain’t me, though. I’m clean, according to the latest Norton updates, and my Eudora address book is empty/unused. (I never even installed Outlook Express.) I’m beginning to get more than a little pissed off. Hope nobody is doing this on purpose.
I can say with assurance that my PC is clean as well. McAfee has caught every infection attempt and I never open unexpected attachments, even from close friends or relatives, without fist contacting them to ask if they sent it and what it is. In addition, I’ve always hated address books and never use them. Especially in GatesWorld, they seem to be a primary point of concern vis-a-vis viruses, so IMO their purported utility falls far short of their degree of risk.
I still don’t understand what satisfaction these computer geeks with no lives other than a computer get from screwing with other peoples’ machines. If someone can explain it to me, educate me, please!!! 
~Larry
i just heard on a radio that there are now programmes wich make back-ups daly and automatically of your whole hard-disk. but i didn’t hear any details.
so in future, we might not have to worry about viruses 
you could be a very good detective on these matters larry, 
questioning those virus freaks
As an IT professional, I deal with this stuff constantly - unfortunately not with quite the education and knowledge I would like to have.
The SoBig will harvest e-mail messages from your computer and send itself to them with a randomly chosen other identity. If not now, then someday a virus will be able to send itself “from” a name it harvested in an earlier infection.
One of the biggest problems is that anti-virus software can only recognize a REPORTED virus. That means someone will get a virus before any anti-virus company can recognize or fix it. Anti-virus software can also catch an unknown virus in two other ways: it is similar to an existing virus OR it has basic structure that is suspicious. AV software will recognize legitimate MS Word, Excel, or Adobe Acrobat patterns and can possibly sniff out the bad stuff ahead of time. Neat feature, but not something to count on.
Best policies: If you run e-mail software on your PC (as opposed to accessing through a web-browser as is done with Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo), make sure you have no Preview Pane operating. Some evil bits can be triggered just by the preview pane.
Another note: there is a thing I call the “idiot virus”. This is a plain message (your computer won’t be harmed by you opening and reading it), that instructs you to do something like find and delete a file (with kindly instructions on how to do these things). There are also scares and scams that work in similar ways. Before you take any such thing seriously, check a reputable AV software company’s web-site. They have more than just a virus list, they have hoaxes and scams as well.
Here is a web-site that will let you look up key words:
http://www.symantec.com/search/
(I don’t know how to paste an active link so you may have to copy and paste in your browser’s Address line.)
Whew. When this thing broke out, the MS hotlines backed up as much as 4 hours, and they were asking everyone in the windows group to help staff the hotlines. What a mess. Just FYI, even without buying anti-virus software, there’s a few things you guys can do to minimize the likelihood of having virus problems. If you have WinXP, there’s a built in firewall, but it’s not on by default. Check out this website for how to use it, etc.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
Oh, and with this virus, it doesn’t really matter if you’re running pine for email… if you open the attachment on a Windows PC, it runs its own net software to propagate. It doesn’t just exploit Outlook. Pretty crazy, eh?
Seriously though, check out the link, it has some useful info. Oh, and about the hoax email… just to make it official:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/news/patch_hoax.asp
Hope this helps you guys a bit.
- Ben
Not a full backup, but check this out:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/gethelp/systemrestore.asp
I’ve never needed it myself, but some of my relatives tend to almost abuse it. 
- Ben
Grandma says she’s not one bit surprised, that Hetty was always a troublemaker 
First a correction: I stated that SoBig harvests e-mail messages - I meant e-mail addresses. Some virii (this one might be one of them) harvest addresses, passwords, credit card numbers and more from places other than the usual storage locations. Some of these can pull a credit card number from a Word document or a database!
Also: The Microsoft link provided by Tinker is an excellent resource (I suggest bookmarking it!), however it does not mention the ones that have scary stuff like: “I just got this from a friend who said that he heard on CNN about a terrible virus. This virus is called JDBGMGR.EXE, and the icon is a teddy bear. Tell everyone you know about this, because it can make delete everything on your hard drive if you don’t catch it in time.” This hoax (I paraphrased a real hoax) can be found through the Symantec link. Try looking up JDBGMGR.EXE at the link I gave earlier if you want to see how their site works. Basically if a reputable anti-virus software company has nothing to report and Microsoft has nothing to report - it’s probably not legitimate (how would CNN know before the anti-virus people?).
Also: In case Tinker’s warning wasn’t enough, don’t download patches, etc. from an e-mail claiming to have Windows updates! Use only the genuine thing - the Microsoft web-site reached through normal (not e-mail) channels. If you use Apple or Linux, you probably want to know the corresponding information (THE source of legitimate software patches, updates, etc.)
P.S. Whistle on! Thank goodness you don’t need a computer for that!
I just got one of those scam (self initiated virus) emails about the email tracking garbage. The person that sent it to me must have had 50+ TO: addresses and the one that forwarded it to him another 50+. 
Crimeny, no wonder the internet is crawling along now.
I am so glad that I switched to Linux 4 years ago.
Linux Distribution links:
A Beginner’s Guide to Choosing a Linux Distribution
Reasons to Choose or Not Choose Linux
LWN distro list
elinux Linux Distributions
Cheap CDs
AlmostFreeLinux
Discount Linux CDs
Linux Central
Cheapbytes
TuxCDs
ComputerHelperGuy
CheapISO
Os Heaven
Linux and virus
The Virus Writing HOWTO reference: Should I get anti-virus software for my Linux box?