• If you receive an E-Mail from someone you don't know or didn't request containing an attachment, don't open the attachment. There is a good chance it is a virus. If you know the person, check with them that they meant to send it to you and that it is not a virus.
• Avoid sharing floppy disks with other people.
  
• Avoid downloading software from the Internet, especially from obscure sites.
  
• Don't forward E-Mail warnings about viruses - they are probably hoaxes!
  
• Install a good anti-virus software, and ensure that you keep the virus definition files up to date. If they are out of date, the anti-virus software is as good as useless - unless you come across an old virus! For a completely free good anti-virus software, try AVG AntiVirus

You are more likely to come into contact with warnings about viruses than actually viruses. These are normally hoaxes. The USA government CIAC has the following to say about these:

"The Internet is constantly being flooded with information about computer viruses and Trojans. However, interspersed among real virus notices are computer virus hoaxes. While these hoaxes do not infect systems, they are still time consuming and costly to handle. At CIAC, we find that we are spending much more time de-bunking hoaxes than handling real virus incidents.

Users are requested to please not spread unconfirmed warnings about viruses and Trojans. If you receive an unvalidated warning, don't pass it to all your friends, pass it to your computer security manager to validate first. Validated warnings from the incident response teams and antivirus vendors have valid return addresses and are usually PGP signed with the organization's key."

They have excellent pages describing a number of such hoax warnings - if in doubt, check them. The mere fact that you forward these messages means that you propagate the virus hoax and in effect simulate the effects of a virus - to clog up/disrupt the Internet because of the increased amount of traffic, and waste other peoples time.

Real viruses are normally transmitted through running/executing/opening a virus or contaminated program/document. You have to have first loaded an infected program onto your computer from a floppy disk, CD-ROM (including magazine cover CD-ROM - the best source for viruses - but even official applications from the manufacture provide good viruses), downloading from the Internet (including receiving via E-Mail), and any other means of communication you can think of. Just by loading/saving the program/software onto your computer's hard disk generally does not result in contamination - you actually have to run/open the program/document.

If in doubt, don't let it any where near your computer - delete it immediately!

Page content last updated on 2002-07-09