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Viruses information on Free Programs
by Don Edrington, MrPCChat@aol.com - October 04, 2001 at 00:30:51:
When Jim Berger recently told me about a free anti-virus service available at www.antivirus.com/pc-cillin, I decided to give it a try. I' m glad I did. A program on the site called HouseCall.AntiVirus offers a free online scan of your hard drive, along with comments on what it finds.To my surprise I found three infected files on my main computer, and one on my laptop. This prompted me to run a check on the 7-year-old PC I keep as a backup. 115 infected files were found on this machine. The thing that surprised me is that none of these computers have ever given any indication of being contaminated and all have been running normally with no visible problems.
In any case, HouseCall said most of the infected files were " cleanable" and offered to disinfect them. Naturally, I accepted the offer. As for the " uncleanable" files, most could be safely deleted, while others could be replaced with files from another computer.
The first thing I did, however, was rename each of the " uncleanable" files by removing the last character from the file' s three-letter extension, thus making the file unusable. After doing a restart and running a few programs to see if any problems developed (none did) I deleted or replaced the target files. I definitely recommend this site, which can also be accessed at www.housecall.antivirus.com.
For those who want even more protection from receiving viruses, Nathan Kelly wrote to tell me about www.mailstart.com, a Web site which offers to have all your incoming email go through its filtering service. They offer a free demo, but subscribing to the service costs $10 per year. I haven' t tried this service, nor do I expect to, because you have to give them your email address and password. Personally, I don' t give my password to anyone I don' t know, but nonetheless feel obligated to mention all the anti-virus tips that readers send me. I appreciate their good intentions and hope the tips will all be valid and useful.
A suggestion for keeping Outlook Express from sending unwanted emails to names on your contact list was sent to me by a number of readers. Since OE has a reputation for being an email program which viruses can infiltrate and then reproduce themselves to be sent to names they find in the address book, this seems like a plausible idea.
This tip won' t prevent you from getting viruses (your anti-virus program should do that) but it will stop viruses from latching onto your address book and sending themselves to others as email attachments.
To keep this from happening, create a contact in your OE address book with the name :!0000 with no email address in the details. This " contact" will then show up as the first on your list. If a virus attempts to do a " send all" from your contact list, you' ll see an error message that says: " The Message could not be sent. One or more recipients do not have an email address. Please check your Address Book and make sure all the recipients have a valid email address."
Click on OK and the suspect message will not be sent to anyone, and no changes will have been made to your original contacts list. The offending message may then be automatically stored in your " Drafts" or " Outbox" folder, from whence it can be deleted.
I hear with increasing frequency that we should all be on guard about free programs that can be downloaded from the Internet. RealPlayer, for instance, has acknowledged that their free media player has come with built-in " spy" software that looks at your PC and sends certain information back to the parent company, which can aid them in deciding what advertising to send you. One critic says that free services should be avoided altogether, because " you get what you pay for."
However, I use a number of free programs that have served me very well, and about which I have nothing but good things to say. The virus checker I mentioned at the beginning of this column is an example, as is 1stPage 2000, the program I use for creating pages on my Web site. StarOffice from Sun Microsystems is a full-blown " office suite" that is totally free with no strings attached.
Another useful freebie is EmailStripper, a handy utility that cleans up malformated email by getting rid of all those >>>>>> symbols and realigns all those " long & short" lines that often appear in an email letter.
This newsletter is also free, and the number of subscribers continues to grow each week.
Anyway, I' m always glad to hear readers' opinions on free programs and/or services they' ve tried. If you' d like to send me yours, email me at MrPCChat@mediaone.net.
All of this year' s and last year' s PC Chats can be found at www.pcdon.com and phone calls are welcome at (949) 646-8625 or (949) 646-4167 after 6 PM Pacific Time.
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