Wild Ones 2002 Archive

ADDITIONAL RESPONSES COMMENT #2: INTERNET VIRUSES

Note from WO Hostess: The Wild Ones Executive Director asked me to pass the following
comments on to you which were sent in response to her request to the chapter
presidents that they remove Wild Ones aliases from their e-mail address/contact books
to prevent viruses from being transmitted to other Wild Ones alias. The e-net alias
is going through a filtering process, but it is not efficient to have all the Wild Ones
e-mail aliases going through this same filtering process.

6-28-02

It appears some of these viruses not only make use of your address book, but also
email addresses in your incoming and outgoing mail, and they can also masquerade,
e.g., if you had sent email to me, the virus can find my address, and masquerade itself
so that the next obnoxious email it sends looks as if it came from me, or from a
virtual address like wildmaster. They typically attack the most popular platforms -
microsoft/aol/internet explorer. That's why I avoid Word attachments like the plague.
If you see an attachment with a weird extension like .exe, don't open it!


– Peter Chen (current Wild Ones national Webmaster)

6-22-02

Your strategy about avoiding the Windows name and address book is not sufficient for
virus protection. I recommend that we advise all members to buy anti-virus software
(Norton, McAfee or other) AND UPDATE THE FILES AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH.

-- Mark Charles (former Wild Ones national Webmaster)

6-6-02

I love having the E-net by the way! My husband and I have two suggestions to offer.
First, set up your antivirus software to scan outgoing mail. This will stop those
messages from filtering through, however it is a little painful because it takes more time.

Another suggestion is for you to keep your address book empty, and keep your mail
addresses in another type of file -- even as simple as a text file. When you want to
send an email, simply cut and paste from your other file in a comma delimited format.
This is something actually that everyone can do to stop this type of virus, and sometimes
keeping the data in another type of file is actually more convenient.

-- Mary of Round Lake, IL

Note from WO Hostess: If you're interested, and Mary’s suggestion doesn't make sense to
you, please feel free to contact me personally and I’ll walk you through it.

5-30-02

The latest virus going around is called W32Nimda.E@mm(dr). It came into our work system
on an email with an attachment named sample.exe. The best bet is to not open anything
with .exe extension even if you know the person that sent it. If you do get this virus,
contact your anti-virus software company if you can't clean it out. Symantec has stated
that "this is a very complicated and damaging threat. In some cases, scanning with
Norton AntiVirus will not completely remove this virus." The virus is brought in via an
email attachment and "worms" throughout the network infecting other computers.

Marge of Black Creek, WI

5-24-02

Although not 100% foolproof, another thing you can do is set up a dummy email address
as follows: !00000. That way, if a virus attacks, that address will be the first one
listed and since its not a valid email, it may not send it on to anyone.

-- Marti of Ft Atkinson, WI

5-6-02

Thanks for continuing the E-mail Network, and thanks to those who did not panic over
snow white. The great key to keeping virus-free is not to open attachments, period.
Even attachments from someone you know can hurt.

– Wendy of Milwaukee, WI