Viruses and email

[Rabah az-Zafar <rabah@ix.netcom.com>]

Poster: Rabah az-Zafar <rabah@ix.netcom.com>

Greetings my fellow Atlantians!

	Once again someone has forwarded a message to me that warns people about a
certain type of email that contains a virus. These warnings seem to be
really prevalent on AOL. I have a certain amount of experience dealing with
viruses both at work, and with my job as Kingdom Chronicler and would like
to address this issue for those people who are not computer "professionals".

	A virus CANNOT be passed in an email message. However, one CAN be passed
in any attachments that may be included. Reading your incoming email poses
no threat, but you need to be careful when you download any attachments. I
recommend using McAfee's Viruscan software to regularly check your system
for viruses. They also make a product called Webscan that checks your
attachments prior to downloading them so you can clean any viruses BEFORE
the file ends up on your hard drive. This program will also check any
programs you download from the World Wide Web as well.
	Viruses have historically only affected executable programs that end in an
EXE or COM extension. There are now new "Macro" viruses that can infect
Microsoft Word and Excel documents, but these are the only data file types
that I am aware of that are susceptible to viruses (another good reason to
stick with WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3!)
	For more information on viruses I suggest you check out the McAfee Web
Site at http://www.mcafee.com. They cover what viruses actually are, and
have a page devoted to virus "hoaxes".

Rabah

---------------------------------
Sayyid Rabah az-Zafar
Vizier al-Kitabi al-Atlantia
(Kingdom Chronicler for Atlantia)
H (757) 631-2718
W (757) 857-4099
F (757) 857-4732
http://acorn.maxson.com
---------------------------------

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