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It's unfortunate that your e-mail addresses were obtained from the site you
used to visit. You can try to block this e-mail and notify your ISP of the
content of the e-mail you are receiving, but the best course would be to
completely change your e-mail address to insure that this mail will not be
received. And, never open an attachment even if it appears to be from a
person you know. If you receive an e-mail with an attachment and you know
the person, ask them if they sent you an attachment before you open it. In
this way, you can help protect yourself against viruses, worms and trojans
that invade computers through attachments.
There are so many viruses around that it would be impossible to pinpoint
which one may have invaded your friends computers. But protecting the
computer and running good virus scans is a big help.
Instead of a virus, your friends may simply have had a 'flood' of porn sites
invade their computers through links and pop-ups. This will sometimes
freeze a computer (it's possible, sometimes, for 50 or more sites to open!)
and this sometimes seems impossible to stop. However, if this happens, use
the ALT F 4 (ALTF4) keys and usually this will stop the sites flooding in.
If a computer seems to not be responding, try Control-ALT-delete. This may
tell you that a program is not responding. If that's the case, follow the
directions given (usually clicking on 'end task' will work to close the
program).
Regarding the child pornography itself, Cyberangels investigates and
actively seeks out online sources of child pornography. Cyberangels does not
remove offensive sites, but when we've verified the content and location of
a site, the appropriate law enforcement agency is notified.
If you wish to submit the sites to us for investigation, you may report the
URLs to us via our web form at: http://www.cyberangels.org/forms/kp.html
Many people help us fight child pornography by reporting these sites to us
and we do investigate each one.
There are four areas that you need to look at, with regards to securing your
system against hacking, viruses and possible data loss. These are:
1. Adequate and up-to-date Virus Scanning Software.
2. Trojan Program Scanning Software.
3. Personal Firewall Protection.
4. Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Procedures.
1. Adequate and up-to-date Virus Scanning Software.
Make sure you have good anti-virus software installed such as Norton
Anti-Virus (http://www.symantec.com). Do not open any attachments or files
that you are not expecting, via email. Even if they appear to be from
friends, verify that they did indeed send you a file before you open it. If
you do not have anti-virus software loaded onto your PC, then purchase and
install a reputable virus scanning software package on your PC and run a
complete virus scan on your hard disk. If you already have anti-virus
software installed on your PC, make sure that you have the latest up-to-date
virus signatures installed on your system. You can usually download these
from the site of the software company for free. If the virus signatures are
out of date, then download the new signatures, patch your anti virus program
and perform a complete virus scan as soon as possible.
2. Trojan Program Scanning Software.
Another important step to take, is to check for Trojan Programs that allow
others to remotely access your computer and anything on your hard drive. Go
to http://dynamsol.ulink.net/files/cleaner3.exe and download and install
the 30-day trial of the Cleaner. After you install it, run the program and
have it scan your drives. This will check your system for any Trojans and
help you remove them.
If you do discover that you have any Virii or Trojan Programs on your
Computer, this may very well indicate that someone has been hacking your
computer as most hackers attack systems via accessing Trojan Programs on the
victims computers whilst the victim is logged onto the internet.
You may find that the Anti Virus Software has already removed Trojan
Programs from your hard disk. If this is the case, when you reboot your PC,
you may see a warning such as the system could not find a particular program
that it is looking to run in win.ini, blah, blah, blah. This is actually the
Trojan program that the system may be looking to execute and load into your
memory and means that your Virus Program has not additionally deleted the
offending lines of code from the affected Windows Registry File. You need to
manually locate that file in the Windows directory and edit it and delete
the line that is using to run the Trojan Program and then save the file,
otherwise you will see that message every time you boot up. It is not
causing any damage to your system but is annoying and should be removed.
3. Personal Firewall Protection.
You did not mention if you have a firewall installed on your system. If you
do not, this is another important step you need to do to protect yourself
against hacking attempts. Go to http://www.zonelabs.comhttp://www.zonelabs.com
and download and install ZoneAlarm. Make sure you keep this firewall running
at all times and check for updates frequently. Also, enable the logging
feature in the firewall so that you have logs of any hacking attempts. If
someone tries to access your system, you will get an IP number of the
intruder and can use this to trace who it is and report them to their ISP.
Please read the help files and
information on the website. Many times your firewall will pick up innocent
pings from your ISP and other "connection attempts" that are not hackers.
Learning to read and understand your firewall software is an important part
of protecting your system.
4. Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Procedures.
Finally, the above methods will certainly do a lot to minimise the risk of
your Computers Security being breached but there are no absolute guarantees
that this will never occur. As most people now store important information
on their home PC's as well as their work PC's, it is vital to maintain
regular backup procedures and be prepared in case disaster strikes. This is
good practice, even if you feel that your system is absolutely secure. You
never know when you might have a hardware failure and lose important data.
If you have been performing regular data backups and have a good disaster
recovery system in place, then the chances are that you will be able to
fully restore your system again, easily in the future. I cannot emphasize
how important good data backup and disaster recovery procedures are.
If you follow these procedures, you should not have to worry about anyone
causing havoc on your Computer. When you log onto some sites and use some
chat programs with your Firewall active, it will initially ask you if you
want to allow that Chat Program or Internet Explorer to access the Internet.
You should answer "yes" to this question. It might next ask you if you would
like to allow the Chat Program to act as a Server. Answer "no" to this
question and you will not have to worry about anyone accessing your computer
whilst you are chatting on mIRC. Unfortunately, you might find that some
Chat Programs, such as ICQ, require you to allow the Chat Program to act as
a server. This is not always a bad thing but generally, it is better to
reply "no" to this question and not take any chances.
