From computers:
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My advice would be:
Get a good anti-virus, one that has the capability to scan incomming and outgoing email. Never, never open an attachment from someone you don't know. Keep abreast on all the current email scams, alot to read, but well worth your while. There are many good sites including all the major anti-virus sites, that have a wealth of information.
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Yes, these days it can be challenging to keep abreast of all the threats, but your anti-virus never sleeps and that is paramount to have.(As opposed to Auntie Vera, but that's another story)
Also, EdRust makes a good point:
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One big one and for quite awhile one of the most frequently used, is .dot
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, as I see that there are some others missing from the list as well. Another one that springs to mind is .zip - could contain anything. Can anybody else think of others?
Two more important points I'd like to make, and one has started happenning to me recently. Seems that a lot of people that I know like to send funny or provacative messages on to others , which is fine, email is for sharing stuff we enjoy with our friends too, but way to many have a sort of mass forwarding list that they just add before sending the message on to everybody. I don't know about others, but I have gotten e-mails that must have been forwarded this way at least a dozen times without the previous addresses stripped. We've had those kind ,eh?, that scroll and scroll past a list that has half the hotmail accounts on it by now, or four and five levels deep into attatchment purgatory! (Whew?)
Well each computer is storing those addresses in sent boxes, delete folders etc., so what happens? A worm comes along, scans the hard drive, and sends every one copies. Multiply that a few times and we're talking something potentially devastating happenning, like this last August (among other times),
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Yesterday marked an unprecedented new level in virus propagation and demonstrated the growing ability of virus writers to disrupt business around the globe," said MessageLabs chief technology officer Mark Sunner.
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The "Slammer" worm struck more than 75,000 computers in just 10 minutes in January, with the number of infected computers doubling every 8.5 seconds, according to researchers at the University of California and other institutions. It went on to infect hundreds of thousands more. E-mail viruses like Sobig can hit the same computer multiple times, so the number of infections is not directly comparable.
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. From here, an article about the biggest outbreaks in history
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/20...2_122822.shtml.
As if that's not enough, your machine can be taken over these days just by openning a message in the preview pane, or visiting a website.
Say bye-bye to $50 to hire a tech to 'unglue' your machine.
For the first time ever this week, I got hit(they were all intercepted by Norton) by email viruses every day, and they are starting to come from people who forwarded my account info from someone mailing 'to me' and others at the same time. Ive had up to a 30% infection rate some days, and had my browser taken over on a re-direct to a site that then infected me.
It's gettin' scary.