I've never had a virus infection on a computer I own. I've had viruses, I get emailed them all the time, but I've never had an infection. I'm not perfect, I've done stupid things to my computers that I later regretted, and as a result learnt quite a lot about how to use them.
I don't use Windows myself any more at home, and only use it at work because I have to. I only use MS Outlook at work because IT says I have to, at home we never used it. At home I update my partner's AV and Windows systems once per week for her, we never have problems. At work our systems get AV updates now and then, and as far as I can tell the OS isn't touched. We've never had an outbreak at home, at work we get viruses outbreaks every now then.
I constantly hear tales of people, who's computer is so infected and overrun with malware that it runs like a sick slug, and eats up 100% of their ADSL/Cable bandwidth sending out SPAM or attacking other machines.
What really amazes me is, that even though there are so many ways to compromise a Windows machine without user intervention, and that it's constantly in the media that you should be careful, it's viruses that require the user to open and run them that are causing all the mayhem!
Most countries require people to have licences before they are allowed to do certain things like drive on the public highway, own a gun, or practice law or medicine. There are tests people can take for proficiency in certain skill areas, and policies in palace to encourage people use tradesmen with certain skills and accreditations, yet any moron can buy a PC, run Windows and cause indiscriminate chaos!
Obviously the "industry" isn't going to do anything about it, they make fat profits out of selling people inappropriate computers, with poor buggy software on it, and then charging even more money when the clueless user gets into problems. I'm also not naive enough to believe that Linux, Unix or Mac OSX would solve the problem either, I just wish there was away of upgrading users....
MyDoom is the worst virus ever
Re:Windows Viruses?
ajt on 2004-01-28T21:27:39
Could be a DOS virus....?
I've only once had a computer infected with a virus and that was only because of a bizarre coincidence. I was at a party with a gentleman named Sean and he promised to send me photos from the party. I gave him my email address and shortly thereafter I received an email from "Sean" with the subject "Here are the photos from the party" (or something like that). Without even thinking, I tried to open the attachment. Fortunately, it was easy to clean up from, but I felt really, really stupid.
As it turns out, the Sean that I gave my email address to never contacted me and I never got the photos
Re:How I Managed to Get Infected
ajt on 2004-01-28T21:33:39
The worst I ever had was installing an Intel Ethenet card on an NT box from CD for someone. At the end of the messing, NT did a re-boot, and there was a FORM infected floppy in the drive, by the time I have ripped it out, the stupid little DOS monster ruined the MBR and the NTFS partition.
After that I went to their house and cleaned all their PCs and floppies, and installed AV software on them all to try and stop FORM getting back in.
Re:Everyone should...
ajt on 2004-01-29T09:19:31
Wise words indeed!
