virus question

[fishsmith]

I got an email from an unfamiliar email address originated at comcast.net my virus software came back telling me this:

[Filename: document_excel.pif, Content-Type: application/octet-stream]

Does anyone know if this a tell tale of a virus or just over protective email security?

[leptar]

http://www.viruslist.com/eng/viruslist.html?id=1070058

ayup...!

[fishsmith]

sneaky bastages. Thanks Man.

watch out for emails from [email*]mjcivello@comcast.net[*/email]

is that email an alias, I think they're called sniffer ?

[RockLobsta]

FS,

You need to be cautiuos even with mail from people you know. Many of the virus's out will grab your address from someone's address book and send the mail from that person. You recieve it from a trusted source so you think its ok but its not. Sounds like you have virus protection so you should be ok. Alot of folks out there don't have it or don't update the thing (new virus pattern's come out every week or better). If you don't keep it up to date you may as well shut it off.

As a rule, never open any thing you were not expecting, even if its from your mother!!

hope this helps.

-RL

[fishsmith]

Thanks fellas, good info.

[JohnR]

Virus definitions should be updated daily, we're now getting a new definition every other day since the virus war started (apparently rival scripting/virus "gangs" are squaring off).

Best practice is to set your AV to update daily and early in the morning. That way when your machine is started it will first try to download a new def - once done you can access your e-mail...

[Slipknot]

Can you get a virus from downloading something from a website?
We got one last week on our laptop and I blame it on my son for downloading something from one of the many sites he gets stuff for video games and cheat codes for gameboy and crap. It changed the homepage to some smut page and my wife had a heck of a time getting rid of it. Maybe it came thru the mail but the other comp. didn't get it and my son was the only one on the laptop so I assume it came from the web. Is that possible?

[JohnR]

Slip - it's not so much a "virus" but code that exploits your system and is often called malware or spyware. I hate it too. AntiVirus doesn't always prevent it though some vendors like McAfee are incorporating some apps in their AV product.

You can also use proactive or reactive systems such as Spybot http://www.safer-networking.org/ or Adaware htt;//lavasoft.de

Spybot will do a little better on the spy/malware but can be a little buggy (Read The Flippin Manual ) and AdAware does better with cookie tracking / and reg edits. But these, just like AV stuff, needs to be udates almost daily.

The good news, though not sure how much good will come of it, is that several of the big ISPa/Portals - MS, Yahoo, AOL, & Earthlink have banded together and are suing the biggest offenders

[Slipknot]

Thanks John, the first thing she did was to run spybot on our other computer and it checked out ok.

what are these viruses, like job security for geeks? kinda like a fireman starting fires so he doesn't get laid off or something?
Idiots with too much time on their hands

[JohnR]

Originally posted by Slipknot
what are these viruses, like job security for geeks? kinda like a fireman starting fires so he doesn't get laid off or something?

Didn't work for me

Actually right now this is a war going on between to virus writing "gangs". The guys that update the anti-virus software are pulling their hair out with OT but the execs must be laughing all the way to the bank...

[dockmaster155]

if you want to keep yuor computer from geting virses then get Mcfee virs scan and update every day

[dockmaster155]

sorry i mean virus

[Raven]

yahoo is a free account and it checks everything for viruses before you get it....plus you can set your pc to run all your email over to a yahoo mail server first.... easy to mark whats spam too.

my big mail server is slow as a snail (not maintained well) so i have been using my
yahoo account with zero problems ....