Virus Attack - Heads Up

Phillip, You managed to read what was not written. There were no shots taken at MS users, nor were extra smarts suggested for NON-MS users, rather a level of involvement (hence 'smart') needed to write a specific wished for capability that in NON-MS systems is fairly simple for most. Is that tangled enough for you? Now as for the other comments about it being a question of foolishess or not while being true do not address the subject of provideing a tool bar or spoof button. Cheers!

"Six_O'Clock_High" >> >> internal messaging, like eBay

I would use whichever computer is best for the job, assuming I had the resources to do so.

I have met some folks using Apples that are obnoxious about it. Just like I meet some Harley riders that stick up their noses at anything other than a Harley. It isn't the machine. It is the person.

Ed Cregger

NEVER click on a URL in an e-mail, regardless of how authentic it seems.

FIRST, check the (detailed) properties of the e-mail.

IF the return path does not show what looks like

1) a "well-formed" user name, (many names are chosen as an insult to our intelligence, being obviously non-real, i.e. bbunny, or tasdevil), or

2) an "appropriately-name"server hostname, (companies like to spread their brand through their registered domain names; hostname should include some equivalent to the company name such as ebay, ibm, avaya, etc.), or

3) a domain name which is "valid" for the "claimed" service, (you could safely assume that many of the domains for east-european, asian, african and south-american countries should be suspect; many of the sites with *.com, *.net, *.org, etc. are increasingly suspect due to organized crime trying to get at your electronic identity info so as to attempt identify theft and empty your bank account; to prevent this last, a useful security measure, although not 100% foolproof, is to insist that ALL calls relating to fund withdrawals and transfers must be initiated from your home phone number, or via your designated "power-of-attorney" representative at their phone number, which you provided to your financial institution from the stated/registered home phone number.)

then you have more than likely received an e-mail from someone who is

a) fishing for valid addresses so as to do a penetration attack, or b) looking for "innocent" or non-security-minded individuals to take advantage of.

If you can do so carefully, use right-click to copy the URL to a browser to verify the full path of the URL. ANYTHING that ends with a *.exe or other suffix should be deemed TOXIC to your computer's health and ignored.

Your system should also be set to ASK you every time BEFORE executing anything, and your answer to EVERY item of unknown origin should be NO.

To be even safer, your e-mail tool settings should be modified to view all e-mails in text-mode only, which would disable all automatic loading of images (even if transfered to your local e-mail client) and disable all URLs, making these non-threatening from accidental or inattentive clicking. You can always turn on, when necessary, the "view as HTML" for all the e-mails that have survived your SPAM triage.

Eric

LOL! Nahhh, no thanks, I'll just stick with my Mac!

SNIP>

Even Macs get hit, but not many users will admit it.

Malcolm

Wrong but thanks for playing anyway!

well they do get hit, not by viruses, but by computer professionals called upon to fix an operating system that there is no way to 'raise the hood' on...up to mac os 10 anyway.