Make sure you're virus protected...

[hootinholler]

It would appear that a mailing list has been infiltrated or generated. I have received one hate mail aimed at the recipients of the letter Katrina Sumners sent out. Ok, I can deal with that, but I just recieved a copy of the bagel.AY worm variant (caught by my defense) attached to an email purporting to be from "The Virginia Grassroots Coalition Team". I live in Md. and have never heard of these guys. The attachment was named Jol03.com

Let's be careful out there! I recommend http://www.nod32.com which is commercial but is reasonable ~$30/yr and has consistently won bake-offs among virus protection over the last several years.

-Hoot

[Ouabache]

1. I NEVER heard of Nod32 before

this. Any other opinions of nod32 as an AV ?

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

5. I'm not familiar with nod32...

... so I won't comment on it.

When I'm not using my Mac, I use the following:

Anti-virus: The free version of AVG anti-virus. If you have Symantec Anti-virus or McAfee, then you're set.
Firewall: Kerio Personal Firewall (free). I used ZoneAlarm for a few years and BlackIce Defender before that, but I find KPF to be better.
Anti-Spyware: two products, Lavasoft Ad-aware SE (this product stagnated for a while, but is back with a vengence) and Spybot Search & Destroy (worth the optional donation).

Oh, and stop using Internet Explorer as your browser... right now. Use Firefox.

These are just my choices and my opinions. Some of these products require a little knowledge to use. I am not responsible for any problems you may encounter (as unlikely as that is).

[hootinholler]

6. I found it while researching AV programs...

I had a copy of MacAffee which silently failed to update the signature DB! It was like 6 months out of date, and I had no clue.

I found 'Virus Bulletin' which does pretty good comparatives in a lab with wild variants. They have a summary report here, and NOD32 detail here.

Concur on the Ad-Aware, it rocks!

Firefox rules the net right now. IE is way too tighly coupled to the OS.

The other thing is don't ever use outlook either. Thunderbird is a pretty good replacement, but, no calendar stuff.

-Hoot

[Amaryllis]

7. Not clear if you mean you use AVG in ADDITION to Symantic, or instead of,

if you don't have it or McAfee.

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

13. To clarify on the AV stuff...

... if you already have an up-to-date version of Symantec Anti-Virus or McAfee then you are fine. If you have nothing, then I suggest looking at AVG. I'm not claiming that AVG is better than SAV or McAfee: just that AVG is better than nothing.

Edit: and no, you don't need more than one AV product.

[Amaryllis]

15. Okay, so I have spy bot, ad aware, Symantic, and the firewall that

comes with XP. Do I need any thing else? Still need Kerio or is this sufficient? I was afraid I'd get into the programs fighting with each other if I got too much stuff. But I am not the most tech literate person in the world.

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

16. You should be fine...

... since you have the XP firewall running, you shouldn't install any other Firewall (like Kerio).

I can't testify to the effectiveness of the WinXP firewall as WinXP Service Pack 2 doesn't play nicely with my computer (SP2 can be a bit prissy). It sounds like you have it running, so there's no need to play with any other firewall product.

Even if you are "not the most tech literate person in the world", you have at least taken an interest in protecting yourself. That's more than most people -- well done.

[Amaryllis]

17. Thank you! I am tech literate enough to know that I need protection.

[benburch]

2. I'm totally protected.

Because I have a Mac.

[kohodog]

4. for now, at least, macs don't have these issues.

I haven't had a virus since 1988 when we bought a IIGS! but that was before Prodigy or AOL. You had to be on a University system to be part of a MUDD or GOPHER.

Life was simple then.

[hootinholler]

9. UUCP && Bang Path addressing emails....

SIGH, yep it were so simple then. NOT!

Then came the Morris worm and, well, the rest is history.

I still miss FIDO-net.

-Hoot

[benburch]

12. I used to run UUCP on a Mac Plus

Along with a Hermes BBS.

[Pam-Moby]

3. Thanks for the info-I will check it out.

by the way, my spell check is not working on this site. Is anyone else having any problems with it on here?

[hootinholler]

8. To the Moderators:

Apolgies for starting an AV discussion, that wasn't the point of the original post. The point was to gather info to see if this is a coordinated attack on people in the movement, or just the latest round of new variants of worms.

Obviously, if it's coordinated, it's relevant, otherwise it's not.

-Hoot

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

14. I think that your warning was justified...

... you experienced something weird that seemed to coincide with something that was mentioned here. Even if this is not a larger problem, it was worth raising a flag and you weren't being an alarmist, IMO.

People should always be very, very careful about who they send money to. There are some assholes on the internet that will happily take advantage of well-meaning people. I have read a few (mercifully few) posts here post-election that triggered my Bullshit Detector™ (a big shout-out to Vinnie From Indy who seems to have purchased the same brand of Bullshit Detector™ as me).

If the mods determine that us (or at least me) going tangential on AV is off-topic, I'm sure they'll take appropriate action.

[Bouvet_Island]

10. I have had very good experience with Kaspersky AV

It checks what you get through your browser, everything going in and out of the system. It took a virus I got that showed up in two hits on google, both on their site.

I use avg on my less heavy duty machines.

I would warn against downloading security software from CNET, that is how I got the only virus infection ever to affect my machinery. Search the company name in google, click on results and not ads, and check the spelling of the URL. Also I would warn against spyware removers you haven´t heard about before, adaware and spybot will usually suffice.

I use Sygate personal firewall, it is free and sturdy in my experience. I haven´t experienced stability issues with it, Zonealarm used to be famous for it.

I´d recommend Spybot search and destroy for spybot alongside ad aware, It has an immunization feature for IE and a registry watcher that is very efficient in my experience.

[NationalEnquirer]

11. Thanks for the tip, gonna check out nod32!

You dont make any money off of them do ya ? :)