The “MyDoom” virus is getting lots of headlines. It’s the worst virus in history! 100 million infected messages! Large companies brought to their knees! It’s the end of the Internet! It’s the end of civilization as we know it!
Nah. It’s an e-mail virus. It sends messages with attachments that run programs that do bad things. Surprise!
Sure, you truly don’t want to be infected – the virus’ latest variation today even prevents you from accessing the fixes from the antivirus vendors, making it more annoying to remove once it’s on your system.
But please – please – tell me you’re bored with this. You’ve heard it before. Your antivirus software is up to date. You use a recent version of Outlook (2003, or XP, or 2000 with service pack 2) that strips potentially damaging attachments off before they reach your inbox. You don’t click on unexpected attachments, ever. Right?
If so, this is old news. You’ll see lots of flotsam and jetsam in your inbox for the next couple of days. Delete them, just like the fourteen times this has happened before. As always, the “sender” shown in the messages didn’t really send them. The names of the attachments change around; so do the subject lines and the body of the messages. You didn’t send the messages returned to you as “undeliverable.”
And if you’re not protected from this stuff by this time, for god’s sake, do the right thing, spare yourself embarrassment and pain, and get up to speed!
