This is a serious topic and one which MUST be taken seriously if you want to protect your computer AND all those for whom you have e-mail addresses in your address book. For the last few years, the twisted people who write these viruses have been becoming ever more innovative and have been finding ever more cunning ways to catch us out and it is all too easy for the unwary to fall into their evil traps.

To avoid picking up a virus it is essential that you install an antivirus program that can detect any virus that may try to get onto your computer. There are many such programs around these days and many have been shown to do the job. However, whatever antivirus program you use, it will ONLY do its job if you keep the virus definitions up to date! This is essential. Before you say you are protected, ask yourself when you last updated the virus definitions - and please remember this: ALL antivirus programs have new virus definitions available at least once per week, one even has a new virus definition file available every day!!! So, IF YOU HAVE NEVER UPDATED YOUR DEFINITION FILES YOU ARE NOT PROTECTED, your antivirus program will NEVER detect the current crop of viruses. To do that you MUST download the latest virus definition files and I urge you to do so without delay.

There are some antivirus programs which provide a "Liveupdate" feature which automatically connects to the internet, looks to see if there are any new
virus definitions available and downloads and automatically installs them if found but until recent years, you have had to start the Liveupdate feature yourself. One such program is Norton Antivirus which for many years (and versions), has had the Liveupdate feature. However, since Norton Antivirus 2002, it has had a feature which does everything automatically, it detects when you are online and starts looking on the appropriate site and then continues from there doing everything "in the background". I didn't even know about this feature until one day a little yellow box popped up telling me the viruses had been updated. Since then I have persuaded our customers that this is the program to have and they have found it an advantage in a big way.

As to the viruses currently doing the rounds, there is one that I've had any number of just recently making itself out to have come from Microsoft Support (support@microsoft.com) and with an attachment - THIS IS A VIRUS, DO NOT OPEN ANY ATTACHMENT AT ALL. The first thing you should do is to delete the message and any attachment you may have received. Believe me, you'll be doing yourself - and your friends in particular, a very big favour. Why? The following explanation is particularly true if you use Outlook Express - users of other programs also need to be very careful although they may not be quite so susceptible to such virus attacks.

Sadly we have had a number of our customers who have opened an e-mail purporting to come from Microsoft. Microsoft DO NOT under any circumstances send e-mails other than as a direct reply to a question or query. They do not 'cold call'. So, for your own peace of mind ensure that you 'bin' any unexpected e-mails from that source.

The recent crop of viruses have a nasty habit of looking in your address book and will attach themselves to a file and send it to everyone in your address book. It doesn't stop there though, they are cunning enough to send the e-mail as though it were coming from someone else in your address book rather than from you. For example, lets say you have myself and Jim in your address book. We both have Norton Antivirus 2002 installed and we know our PCs are "clean". Nevertheless, the virus on your PC could finish up sending me an e-mail with an infected attachment which appears to have come from Jim! Do you get my meaning? It probably doesn't stop there either in that having been activated on your PC, it may well have opened your PC up to attack by hackers who could have ready access to everything on your PC. This last bit to be honest is a bit unlikely and I believe it to be more likely aimed at big business and governments - or anywhere where there may be confidential information stored, e.g. doctors surgeries and hospitals.

In the unlikely event of you receiving an e-mail containing a virus, normally contained within an attachment, especially considering that you are now keeping your antivirus software up to date, there are some rules of thumb that still hold some strength. NEVER, EVER open an e-mail with a 'double extension, just bin it. What is a double extension? Files have as part of their name an extension - Word files are named as mywordfile.doc where .doc is the extension which informs the computer that it is likely to be a Word file. A file with a double extension would appear thus - mywordfile.doc.vb7 - leave well alone.

As you can see, virus protection is a subject which must be taken seriously and please, ensure you update your virus definitions regularly and do a scan of your PC regularly as well just to ensure some nasty blighter hasn't crept by when your PC wasn't looking!