The Computer Club Newsletter

October 2003

By Ron Uncapher

The October 7^th meeting was held in the Christian Life Center of the Community Church. The featured presentation was a sneak peek at the new Microsoft Office 2003 System before it is introduced to the public. Microsoft provided a speaker who reviewed the highlights of the latest in the evolution of the Microsoft Office System. The new Office 2003 will be in stores October 21^st. The meeting was well attended by TVCUC members and guests, the MAC Users Group in the Village and The Tennessee Valley PC Users Group that meets in Loudon.

The November 4^th meeting will be held at its usual location, the Yacht Club with Computer Basics at 6:30 PM and the featured presentation at 7:30 PM. Club Officers will demonstrate "How to Tune Up Your Computer". If your computer is running slower than it did when it was new there are ways to improve its performance, to help applications run faster without hardware changes. We will also review the steps necessary to update your operating system regardless of the version. Invite your friends and be prepared to take notes.

Please visit our website at www.tvcuc.org for last minute information about this meeting. Channel 3 will also broadcast meeting details. We hope to see you there.

I have covered viruses and antivirus software in previous articles, namely in the March 2002 and February 2003 issues of the Connection. However, the past few months have seen a huge increase in the types of viruses and the number of emails being circulated. A really bad one is the W32.SVEN virus. This virus is delivered by email with several different FROM headers and SUBJECTS. It will arrive as an attachment that may appear to come from Microsoft as an urgent Windows update. It looks legitimate until you closely inspect the email address. It is definitely not from Microsoft. Besides, Microsoft does not send email to users.

Another version of delivery is from "Postmaster" with a subject such as "returned mail". There are several such headers that entice you to install or open the attachment. DO NOT OPEN IT! DELETE IT! One clue is the size of the attachment. The size has been almost exactly 144 Kbytes. Recently, a "new update" has been upped to 156 Kbytes.

If your antivirus software is up to date, it will recognize the virus and delete it from the email. If yours is not up to date or you don’t have one, you are at risk. Check the above noted articles on the TVCUC Website for information on antivirus software.

If you use Internet email such as Yahoo, AOL, or MSN (Hotmail), you can delete these viruses before downloading them. Hotmail will enable you to block them so that they are not even delivered to your inbox. If you use Outlook Express or Outlook as your mail client, look at "Properties" by right clicking on the email header. It should be obvious that the From address is not something you want to deal with. Just delete it from your INBOX then delete it from your DELETED ITEMS box. An alternative to keeping unwanted email from getting to your computer is to use MailWasher. I described the program in the October 2002 Connection article. I still use MailWasher. All of the Connection articles are available on the TVCUC website Library.

Let’s see a show of hands from anyone who uses GATOR. Convenient, isn’t it. Fills forms, saves IDs and Passwords. It also delivers a lot of junk popup ads to your screen and sends your surfing habits back to advertisers. It’s called SPYWARE. It may just be a nuisance, but I don’t like. I uninstalled GATOR and got rid of the associated spy programs by going to www.safer-networking.org. Read about spyware and download SPYBOT-SEARCH AND DESTROY, a two and a half megabyte program that will scan your files and find all the spyware on your computer. Then it gives you the option to delete it. I replaced the convenience of GATOR with ROBOFORM. ROBOFORM has the same functions as GATOR without the spying. It can be found at www.roboform.com.

Finally, in August, I warned users of WinXP and Win2000 about the MSBLASTER worm. Hopefully, you have used Windows Update and updated you system. Just to be sure you are safe and all your ports are closed, Steve Gibson of Gibson Research has a site that will educate you about the hole in Windows that makes you vulnerable to hackers and worms like MSBLASTER. Check your vulnerability or lack thereof with a small download program called DeCOMbobulator. Surf to http://grc.com/dcom/intro.htm for information on how to verify that you are protected.

Whatever else you do this week, make sure you update your antivirus software.