Handling an E-Mail Virus
I'm sure you have all received E-Mail warning you of dire consequences if you read an E-Mail whose subject is "Good News!" or "AOL4FREE" or something like that.  These are hoaxes intended to damage free communication by making people afraid to use E-Mail.  When you consider the time wasted reading and forwarding such things, they are as destructive as the real thing.

It is not possible -- NOT POSSIBLE -- to get a virus by just reading an E-Mail, unless the E-Mail contains a link, macro, or attachment that you execute.

There are simple rules that, if followed, will protect you from any E-Mailed virus:

1. If it's too good to be true?  Be careful!  You should probably delete it.

2. Always check to see where a message came from before clicking anything.  Then check to see if it is actually addressed to you.  An empty To: line or "undisclosed recipient" have not been sent to you by a friend or a company you deal with.

3. If it's something unexpected, like your account has been cancelled or you must change your password, check who it's actually from.  If the link or attachement does not match your provider, delete the fake.

4. If you ever open a message and you get a warning that alerts you that the mail contains macros, make sure that you select the option to disable macros before you continue.  It is not a good idea to disable caution messages in your E-Mail or browser programs.

5. If you receive a message from someone you do not know and it contains an attachment, do not open the attachment till you have made sure the attachment does not contain a virus.  There are programs on the market that can be used to check such things.

The next time you get one of these hoaxes, instead of forwarding it, please reply to it with the URL for this article.

Sources of Viruses
Computer viruses are not as common as most people believe, and rather easy to avoid.  Commercial software on commercial CD-ROMs is almost guaranteed to be virus free, but any software on floppy disks or noncommercial CDs can be a risk.  Anyone can make floppies and noncommercial CDs, and can put anything they want on them.  It doesn't matter who wrote the program; someone else can add to it or alter it.  Commercial CDs have data, usually the name of the company that burns the CDs, burned into the inside track and visible to the naked eye.  Recordable CDs lack this, and usually have a batch number on the unsilvered area of the hub.  Be wary of any CD that lacks this identification, and certainly of anything with a stick-on label. Of course, even a commercial CD could be infected, since a criminal could hack into the manufacturer's system and plant a virus before the CD master is made, but this is extremely unlikely.

By far the most common source of a virus infection is downloaded software and E-Mail.  Anything downloaded can be infected, even from big, reliable, long established companies.  It's not easy for criminals to break into such systems, and it certainly is very rare, but it has been done.  A public bulletin board (Blog) is probably the easiest place to plant a virus.  A good Sysop (the System Operator for the Blog) can keep the web site clean, but some are careless.

Some viruses attach themselves to programs on the infected system, and are transmitted to other systems when the programs are copied.  If a friend gives you a copy of a program, check it for a virus, even if you trust your friend; his system may be infected.

Protection
It is a good idea to have an anti-virus program; they are cheap, easy to use, and easy to keep updated.  You do have to keep getting the updates, because these programs use an anti-virus database to recognize viruses, and this database must be upgraded when new viruses are discovered.  Sometimes an anti-virus program will interfere with the installation of new software, especially if you are installing a Service Pack.  That means you should disable the anti-virus when installing new software, but that leaves you unprotected should there be a virus.  What now?

The best defense is to have a test machine, not on a network, not connected to anything else.  You disable the anti-virus on the test machine, load the new software, then start the anti-virus and test.  Once you have established that the software is clean, you can load it onto your production system.

OK, most of us can't afford to have a machine we only use for virus checking.  The next best solution is a test disk.  On my home machine, Disk 0 is a 2GB IDE disk, with two 1GB partitions.  The first is a secondary Windows NT installation which I use to repair my primary system partition as needed.  The other partition has Windows NT installed, but the disk configuration only sees the two partitions on Drive 0.  I boot to it and do virus checks.  I figure the worst a virus can do is wipe out the two partitions on Disk 0, and they are easily rebuilt.

Naturally no system or procedure can guarantee absolute safety.  If you are reasonably careful, use an anti-virus program, always virus check new software, and keep your backups updated, you should never have any significant trouble from a virus.