The Black Spot

Captain Phil Harris was my favorite captain on the TV Show, “The Deadliest Catch”. He wasn’t a pirate by trade (that I know of), but seemed like one at heart. Condolences to his family.  See the Cornelia Marie website for the announcement.

For many years, I’ve seen friends, family, and acquaintances freak out about potential viruses, or rumors of malicious code.  The warnings are all the same – dire messages of impending doom, and the horrific consequences of not following the advice within.  I’ve been involved in computing for nearly three decades, and in all that time, I’ve only fallen victim to virus-related attack a few times.  And believe it or not, I do not run any type of anti-virus software.  How does one accomplish such a feat, you might ask?  A few simple guidelines is all it takes to keep your electronic best friend in good health without dropping a paycheck or two on protection.

Step 1:  Don’t open or download email attachments from ANYONE that you don’t know.  Even if it looks attractive, promises to lengthen your body parts, or earn you big bucks.  These types of offers are NEVER worth the risk.  On top of that, don’t open attachments from people you DO know, unless you really, really need to.  If it’s a spreadsheet for work, that’s one thing – but when you are talking about funny videos and songs, you may not know where your trusted friend got the item, and even simple pictures and media files can have malicious code embedded inside.  If you are the one sending the material, don’t send it as an attachment – instead, send a link to the original source.  In addition to allowing the recipient to make an informed decision of their own, this also protects the legal copyright of the owner of the material.  Don’t steal content, people.  Unless you are a pirate.  Then is is totally okay. (smirk)

Step 2:  Stay off of websites that you don’t know are legit.  If you go to a site, and numerous popups appear, or the site seems to force you into performing actions to navigate where you want, that’s a warning sign.  Good designer/developers employ good usability practices – in other words, they leave the freedom of how the site is navigated to the user.  Also, avoid sites that have weird domain extensions.  Some of the worst are .ru, .ws, and .cz.   If you are reading this and have a site with these extensions, or host it pretty much anywhere in Eastern Europe, I’m sorry, but I’m probably not going to your site.  Purchase a .com, .net, or .info.  There are many other perfectly good domain extensions out there, but most site owners will seek to buy the .com version of their domain name.

Step 3:  If you ignored step 1, then by all means, never ever open an attachment whose file extension is .exe, .com, .bat, .vbs, or .js.  These are executable files – meaning running programs, and there are other extensions as well.  Do a little research.  If you are looking at a file you just can’t live without, use Google to search for the meaning of the file extension.  Also, if you have not yet set Windows to show your file extensions by default, do so.  What this means is that if I send you a file called ‘loveletter.vbs’, it might appear to you as just ‘loveletter’.  You can set up windows to view all file extensions.  This is how the infamous Love-Letter-For-You virus was spread, and infected millions of systems in a single week.

Step 4:  Not all virus warnings are legit.  Often these are attempts to get you to follow a set of instructions, or to forward the information to all your friends.  The original author is in the forward list, and can get a list of everyone you send to.  This information can be sold – and legit email addresses are worth bucks to information thieves.  Chain emails can also be used this way – so avoid them too.  If you have doubts about the legitimacy of a virus warning, search for it on http://www.snopes.com

Step 5:  Unless you have extra money to spend, or want to protect yourself from OLD viruses, don’t waste your money on anti-virus software.  This opinion is controversial, but if you know me, you know most of my opinions are.  Basically, most viruses do the majority of their damage BEFORE the anti-virus maker is able to add the definition for the new virus to the software.  Additionally, many people don’t update the software often enough for it to do any good.  On top of that, most anti-virus software installs additional software on your computer to keep it updated automatically, which robs your pc of needed performance.  In my opinion, it’s simply not worth the benefit.  Use common sense instead.  DISCLAIMER:  As with ANY of my advice, follow at your own risk.  If you choose not to use anti-virus, then get a virus which wipes all your data, I will not fix your computer or send you money.  This tip only works if you use common sense as well.

Good luck out there people, and be safe.
Pops