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Re: worms or lack thereof




"Pamela L. Gay" wrote:
The moral? It is worthwhile to compulsively update your virus scan
software and install all Windows Updates as soon as they come out.


There are many steps to take, but these are what I would call basic.

1. NEVER open unsolicited attachments, or click on unknown links in
E-mails. In addition never give out information solicited in an E-mail.
Instead go to the actual vender and to check if the solicitation was real.
2. Set your mail client to reject "executable" attachments (Outlook patch)
3. Purchase a virus scanner that automatically updates itself (Norton,
McAfee are good, and you can often find the new version each year at a low
cost or as a freebate)
4. Use a firewall and set it to close all unused ports particularly RPC.
Good firewalls can stealth most ports of your machine so it does not appear
to even be on the network. Norton sells a good easy to use firewall, but
there are others. The Norton firewall also has an AD filter and pop up
stopper.
5. Make sure your operating system is up to date with all security patches.
6. If your ISP has virus filtering have it enabled.
7. For an extra layer of security get a good sandbox program that prevents
intrusions by unknown viruses. The big problem with a sandbox is that it
can be a real pain when you try to install new programs, but it does provide
very tight security.

These recommendations are approximately in order of importance. The first
is probably the most important because no automatic procedures are damn fool
proof.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX