The Virus Issue

[Mi Vida Loca]

Frankly I feel that while the whole virus thing may not be directly an Ercoupe issue it does belong here. Not everyone on this mail list is particularly computer savvy and even those of us who are can still be caught with our pants down. A good example of this is the current little terror out there which is a mutation of the explorer.zip virus. The major corporations that just got bit had the best anti virus programs in existence and were all current.

Since we use this medium for communication about Coupes among other uses it behoves us to help each other to be aware of this sort of problem just as much as I would expect each of you to pass along any information which could present a potential problem for our Coupes or flying in general. As the old saying goes " if you ain't a part of the solution, you're a part of the problem".

Since a new virus signature cannot be developed until someone has already been infected and a million people can potentially be infected in a matter of a few hours it does not pay to get too holier than thou when someone else gets infected. I was glad to see Keith had the balls and class to take hat in hand and apologize about over reacting.

Just as a tip most of these new viruses most of which are actually worms seem to target MS outlook, word and some other MS products. In case this hint is too subtle for you get if you are using a MS product as your E-mail client change to something else less vulnerable such as Eudora, Pegasus etc. You must update you virus signatures weekly. Norton Antivirus makes this task particularly easy push a single button and it does it for you. There are about 300 new viruses found per month and most of the antiviru companies now provide at least weekly updates. If you are using an antivirus program that much more than 6 months old you need to really look at getting the most current version. Most of the newest versions of these programs such as Norton or McAfee have put more emphasis on the antiviral scanning of incoming e-mail.
Dave
41 Charlie
Dave's Ercoupe Page
www.flash.net/~dmprosvc/dave
ICQ # 1388138
wwp.icq.com/1388138#pager