Are you worried about viruses?
You have good reason to worry considering current conditions!
The following is very out of date and should be disregarded.
Maybe someone sent you a warning message about the "Good Times", "Join the Crew" or some other horrible virus that will erase your hard drive. What do you do? Well, chances are that it is a HOAX! Don't be embarrassed if you believed it. It is easy to be deceived once. Read on and see the links for the TRUTH about this type of message.

While there are thousands of viruses out there, most of them are transmitted when you run a program. Some macro viruses are trasmitted by email, particularly if you use MS Word. Check the links and read about macro viruses ,if you are worried. You should of course, be suspicious of unexpected programs received in your email. Don't run them, or at least scan them with a good virus protection program first.

So what do you do? First, check out the links below about legitimate virus warnings and hoaxes. You will likely find that the warning you received is a hoax so do exactly the opposite of what the hoax message asks you to do.

Do not forward these false warnings to others! Simply reply to the sender and tell them that it is a hoax. Ask them not to sent it out to others and point out the links at the bottom of this page.

Be smart and get a good virus scanning program and use it. (See the links below) It will protect you from most virus attacks. Don't trade programs with friends and be suspicious of programs that anyone sends you. IRC can be particularly dangerous. Backup your valuable data and keep the backups in a safe place. Then, forget about viruses. I use AVP, Norton Antivirus and McAfee and know from that they workswell. I won't get into the argument about which virus scanning product is the best. If you have a particular program that works, all I say is "Use it EVERY time!"

Warning
Recently a few new threats in the form of Trojans have come on the horizon. A friend sends you a game over ICQ or you download it. It is a cute little game called WHACKAMOLE. Unknown to you contains a TROJAN. This is not a virus, just a secret program hidden in the other program. Just like the TROJAN HORSE, this one also contains more than you would expect. It contains a program called NETBUS that silently installes on your computer when you run the game. Once installed it will allow a hacker with the right tools to have total access to your computer. The hacker could do just about anything you can think of such as iritating things like open your CD rom door too FORMATTING YOUR HARD DRIVE, DELETING FILES OR STEALING YOUR INTERNET PASSWORD AND USERNAME. Many hackers get free Internet by stealing peoples accounts.

So what should you do? Don't accept programs sent to you even by good friends. Get a good virus scanner and keep it up to date. If you think you have been infected with a TROJAN like NETBUS OR BACK ORIFICE, your virus scanner may be able to remove it.

If you want to learn a lot about viruses, explore the following:
McAfee Home Page
the National Computer Security Association page
Back Orifice Removal
NetBus Removal
or the links below.

Some Good Virus Scanners

If you have a serious problem, try AVP. They give you a 30 day demo that will fix you up.