"Whom do we trust?"
In general, do not believe anyone, even in email from what appears to be
your closest friends, who claims either
a) to be sending you an attachment which you don't expect and which is not
adequately described in personal terms you are familiar with, or
b) to tell you how to cure a virus by any means other than using a standard
virus tool or visiting a very standard manufacturer virus web page..
The professional networking community is spending a lot of time and
expertise on the virus problems and can be relied on to give good advice;
those of you at institutions should have good and clear relations with your
network people who should keep you informed. Those of you not at
institutions need to find advisors like that.
"Spoofing" is a network-technical term for intentionally misleading
statements, addresses, and program code. Both a) and b) above are being
successfully used as spoofing tools at a great rate. Coincidentally
Consumers Union, that think tank of geek knowledge, has done some homework
on viruses and their latest issue gives similar advice. They note that
over 40,000 viruses are known to exist, though only a few hundred are very
significant; also that every kid and his brother are experimenting with
viruses, mostly already caught by the virus software. But the result is
the loss of trust in the net which we need to pay attention to. --pg
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Peter S. Graham Syracuse University Library psgraham@syr.edu
Syracuse, NY 13244-2010 315/443-5530 fax 315/443-2060 NW4.7 w1/01