Computer Viruses and Hoaxes

["Bob Forsyth" <>]

G'day all,

 

Not birds, but following on from the current topic trail -

 

All internet users should be aware its a bad & nasty world out there and especially the PC/MS Windows users who are the target for +90% of both Viruses and Hoaxes. Mac users apparently are still rarely targeted.

 

The following URLs may be of interest to List Members-

 

1

Hoaxes information

Norton (Symantec)

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html

 

McAfee

http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp

 

Sophos

http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/hoaxes/

 

Trend Micro

http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/hoaxes/hoax.asp

 

 

2

Viruses

There are a number of commercial Anti-Virus programmes available (of varying quality) but a respected free one is

AVG and comes from www.grisoft.com.

 

The commercial program getting the recent top marks (by a whisker) is Norton 2003 .. which even updates itself automatically

 

If your computer does catch a Virus the Web pages of the above companies provide free programs to clean the PC

 

3a

Alternate Programs

There are alternative email programs to Outlook Express for PCs and these are infrequently targeted.

- Eudora,

- Netscape Messenger,

- Opera and

- Pegasus

 

and if you want to go to the full hog and want an alternate browser to MS Internet Explorer consider

- Mozilla,

- Netscape Navigator and

- Opera

 

These programs are frequently included on CDs attached to the front of popular Computer magazines.

Downloads are available via Tucows, Cnet etc

or search Google http://www.google.com.au/ 

 

The BIG question is do you continue using Microsoft programs & the very latest Antivirus software or alternate programs that has no Antivirus software ?

 

4

General Info

Australian Newsletters that are worthwhile subscribing include -

 

- Ray Shaw          http://www.rayshaw.im.com.au/

- About Seniors    http://www.aboutseniors.com.au/

                          and join the Computer Update Mailing List

- Internet Update http://www.mkdsoftware.com.au from Tony Stevenson

 

 

Now back to birds !

 

Regards
Bob Forsyth, Mount Isa, NW Qld.