Sent With Good Intention But!!!!

Computer viruses spread quickly. The most effective ones, very quickly. Sending out an email to everyone on your list warning about a virus is of no use and in some cases can cause more harm than good.

I'll put the conclusion near the top of this message as not everyone will want to read the details.

Conclusion,
Rather than sending messages about a specific virus to everyone on your mail list, take time to ensure your own system is secure. Make sure you have the latest fixes for your operating system, ensure that you have virus software running and that it too is up to date.

If you are sending any message out to large groups of people use the "BCC" or "blind copy" option rather than putting all the names in the "to" box.

Now here's the technical bit...

Viruses tend to follow new trends. As we are moving away from using email viruses now tend to use fake web sites to distribute themselves. The trick is, how to get you to go to that fake web site? Fraudsters will make false claims, use popular subjects and many different streams to try and make you click links.

Email is becoming a more difficult way to send a computer virus. Common mail systems like Hotmail and Gmail now have systems on their servers which block a large amount of junk before it even gets to your computer. Even once a virus gets to your computer some services will scan it for you before letting you download it, if they even let you at all.

The systems that are most at risk are the older ones.

Windows XP is still very popular even though it's been replaced by Windows Vista and subsequently Windows 7.

If your machine is still running Windows XP ensure that it is running service pack 3.

Early versions of Windows XP are susceptible to viruses due to well known problems with the operating system.

It is impossible to know if the next email you open, or the next link you click is going to take you to a virus. Updated operating system and virus checking will help greatly and alert you when something doesn't seem right.

If you are using Internet Explorer version 6, upgrade to 8 or change to one of the many other browsers. Again, Microsoft had acknowledged that IE6 has flaws which can be exploited. Updating to 8 will give you other benefits as well as increased security.

If your computer is old and will not run Windows 7 you may want to consider switching to UBUNTU. This really depends on what you're using the computer for. If it's an old computer then it's more likely you're using it just for browsing the web and email in which case UBUNTU may be a better option for you than Windows.

UBUNTU is not immune to computer viruses, however, as it is not as popular as Windows there has not yet been a single wide spread virus on this OS.

If you have any questions about computer viruses, updating your system or any other general computer related questions please do not hesitate to contact me.