|
|
|
|
Antivirus Protection I (Carolyn Meinel) am on a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency email list for computer security whizzes. Every month or so someone manages to email a virus to the rest of us. Does this mean us whizzes aren't so great after all? Or does it just show how seductive and sneaky viruses can be? Absolutely anyone who lives in the real world needs an antivirus program. OK, OK, it is possible to almost absolutely, perfectly protect your computer, even without an antivirus program. However, even I (Carolyn Meinel) just might fall for a nicely packaged nasty. That's when we need antivirus protection. As with a personal firewall, the important thing is to set up your antivirus program to act really paranoid. For example, does it scan the Recycle Bin? Some viruses hide there. Jane Power User might think that all she needs to scan is programs. However, what if a virus is hiding dormant in a non-program file just waiting for you to accidentally activate it? (Zip files are famous for hiding viruses.) The solution is to choose an option to scan all files. To be ultra-paranoid, most antivirus programs will let you manually choose a scan of any files you want. Heck, force it to scan the Recycle Bin.
Be sure your antivirus program is up to date. Every few days someone unleashes one that no antivirus program can defeat. At each antivirus company, a research team battles the virus creators to capture these new ones and figure out how to kill them. If you want to stay on the leading edge of this arms race, check for updates every day. OK, OK, at least every week. Now, a word about Outlook. This Windows email program is free and has lots of nifty features. One of these is attachment preview. Unfortunately, preview automatically runs all attachments. This installs viruses. Keith Little says "Outlook is the only email application on the face of the earth that has ever betrayed users to that degree." If you are serious about avoiding viruses - don't use Outlook. Finally, let's talk about Microsoft Office and the macro viruses that can infest its files. What if your antivirus program misses some of them? To be safe, set your Office programs to warn you before running macros. To turn on macro checking, on each Office application, click Tools --> Options --> General. Check the Macro virus protection box. This feature won't tell you whether a macro hides a virus. It will only give you the choice of disabling macros. With Office 2000 you can use certificates to guarantee that that macros in Office files are free of viruses. Or can you? There have been cases where people trick the system. Hey, it's your computer. Do you trust Microsoft certificates? |
|
|
|
