What do you do?

Now if your antivirus program says you have a virus or you are getting emails from your friends saying you have a virus, you probably do. There are certain viruses (Klez.x and variants) that spoof your email address from someone else's infected computer and send infected emails out that look as if they are coming from you. If this is the case, you probably are not infected but it never hurts to do a free online scan. If your AV program did not catch the virus, go to http://housecall.antivirus.com/ and do a free scan to clean up your PC then, if you have an antivirus program, update your antivirus definitions. If you are not running an antivirus program, get one or get off the net. An unguarded PC is nothing but a tool for hackers to pillage the Internet with. 

If you've received an email saying that "If you don't delete this file your computer will die in 24 hours, your children will grow a third eye, the world will end as you know it, and you must pass this information on to all your contacts in your email list". What do you do?

1.    Email the warning to all in your email list and delete the file. WRONG! You will have more than likely passed on bad information that will kill their computers too. This really discredits your advice and generates lots of business for local computer shops. Not all is bad. You will be supporting many local computer shops that would gladly charge them $x/hour to fix their mistake of listening to you. PEOPLE ON YOUR EMAIL LIST WILL NOT BE REAL HAPPY WITH YOU!!!!

2.    Explore the email. Go to sites such as: http://www.urbanlegends.com, http://www.snopes2.com/, or http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ and look for the file mentioned. If it is not listed, go to http://housecall.antivirus.com/ and do a free online scan. The scan will use the most recent virus updates and will find any potential 'issue'. You can also explore various viruses and hoaxes at http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html and http://www.mcafee.com/anti-virus/default.asp or go to http://www.microsoft.com/ and search on a file name, say "jdbgmgr.exe", and find out its true use. Microsoft will probably have hoax information on the email too. Should you find that you have received a hoax email, please reply to all that received it and explain that it is a hoax, then include my webpage for reference (http://jpdurbin.net/84online/WhatToDo.htm). If a reference to the file can not be found in any of the aforementioned web pages, contact the various hoax and antivirus entities. You very well may end another email hoax or stop a virus before either does too much harm. This will also save many from the cost and embarrassment of taking bad advice or spreading it.

 Johnathan P. Durbin
http://jpdurbin.net/
A Member of the 84Online team