As you know by now, Engineers are constantly manufacturing new viruses. However, hoaxes,
warnings, and horror stories are almost as common as real viruses.
You cannot get a virus by:
OPENING AN EMAIL MESSAGE
Simply reading the text of an email is totally harmless. Virii (or virusses) CAN be sent through
email. But they cannot be plain text. If the message has attachments, you should be careful about
opening them. In fact, one recent virus reportedly takes advantage of Microsoft Mail to duplicate
and send itself to other addresses in your in-box. If you're familiar with virus hoaxes, this
ShareFun virus sounds suspiciously like a scam. Here's why it's not: the virus is contained in an
attachment rather than in the email message itself. Don't execute strange attachments without
scanning them first, and do not configure your email reader to launch Microsoft Word
automatically when it receives an attached document.
READING SOMEONE'S WEB PAGE
Yes, there's a security hole in Internet Explorer: if you disable the browser's security function,
malicious ActiveX Controls can rearrange files on your hard drive, look for classified information,
and so forth. Similar problems are theoretically possible with Java. But these holes are not viruses.
To get a virus from a Web page, you have to download a program and execute it, and both
Navigator and Internet Explorer give you ample warning when you begin to do so. If you're
paranoid, be sure to scan any file you download before opening it.
DOWNLOADING A FILE
Again, you must execute a program in order to contract a virus. So, if you download a document,
you can get a virus when you open your word processing program to read it (technically, the
document is data and cannot be infected--it's the macro, or template, that is infected). Or, if you
download a suspicious piece of software, you can contract a virus when you try to install it. For
example, there is a program called AOL4Free that will let you
use America Online without paying (the student who created this program recently pleaded guilty
to defrauding AOL). There is also a Trojan horse called AOL4Free that, if executed, overwrites
all the files on your hard drive. But downloading the file is harmless--as long as you don't run it!
(And what are you doing trying to cheat your way onto AOL, anyway?....And more importantly,
WHY would you want AOL in the first place?) To be safe, scan every file you download before
you do anything with it.
CHATTING ON ICQ or POWWOW
It is possible to contract a virus via ICQ or PowWow, provided that the person you are chatting with has
sent it to you in a file document. To get a virus by chatting with a stranger on ICQ or PowWow,
they must first send you the virus program, (depending on how you’ve got your ICQ or PowWow
set up, you may or may be asked to accept it) then you must download the program and execute
it. Chatting is nothing more than chatting. Just like above, scan every file you download before
you do anything.
