> > No disrespect intended, but if you are absolutely sure that you are
never
> > going to get a virus, you are eventually in for a nasty surprise.
Nearly
> > every computer that I work on has one virus or another.  Either that, or
it
> > has so much spy-ware loaded that it's just as bad off as if it had a
virus.
> > Just because you turn off a setting, or raise your security level in
> > winderz, doesn't mean that you are safe.  I have seen some very clever
> > techniques used to get past that stuff.
>
> Agreed...  but in every case when someone has posted a virus to the list,
> and in every case in which friends and others send virus-infested emails
> that arrive here (and are promptly nuked by a very simple Procmail
> filter), the whole thing was easily preventable.  I'm not talking about
> people falling victim to really sneaky, obscure things -- this is the
> stuff NO ONE should be getting.

This is true.  People could avoid many viruses, if they'd just pay
attention.  Unfortunately, far too many people participate in joke swapping.
People instinctively trust their friends, naturally the viruses feed upon
this behavior.  I can't tell you the number of customers that I have spoken
with about viruses.  The first thing more than half of them say is, "I only
open things from my friends".  You should see the look on their face, when I
explain to them how the first virus they will catch, will come from one of
their friends.  :-O  They really have no understanding of viruses.  This is
not surprising as they have no real understanding of their computer, much
less how viruses work.  Many people actually believe that their friends are
doing this to them on purpose.

If you want a real shock, get a copy of NetBrute, scan some subnets and then
be amazed.  Most of the computers you browse, will contain .eml files in all
of the directories of the hard drive.  Microsoft owns the lions share of the
responsibility for this.  What ever happened to "product liability"?

BTW, did you update your zlib?  ;-)

michael brown

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