Billions of people around the world use computers but still don’t really know what a virus is or how to recognise one. John Hillman tries to help with the basics.

Viruses are a pain to understand, what are they? Who makes them? How do I know if I have one?

These are the kinds of questions people ask themselves only to go online in search of answers and be bombarded with geek speak; directed to tech blogs written by people who obviously don’t do face to face communication unless summoned by a judge.

So to try and help those of you wondering how these strange ethereal bug thingies work, here’s a few tips to look out for when running your PC.

1. Is your computer running slower than normal?

2. Are you seeing unusual error messages?

3. Are you seeing distorted dialogue boxes and menus?

4. Is your computer not responding or locking up?

5. Is your computer restarting on its own?

6. Is your computer crashing and restarting on its own?

7. Are your disk drives inaccessible?

If the answer to any of the above is yes then you may very well have an infected PC, so you will have to run some malware removal software and make sure that you install some good up-to-date antivirus software too.

Most viruses are actually quite harmless; there are those that do real damage and try to steal personal information, and those that just slow you down. Ultimately it’s down to you to stop your PC catching the equivalent of a cold, think of anti-virus software as giving it a good diet, vitamin supplements and plenty of exercise.
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Image Credit: bodycoach2

John Hillman reads through McAfee’s spam report and discovers that watches are the new viagra

McAfee Spam report for July 2009 shows a marked difference between spam subjects delivered to .com and .uk addresses.

The UK domain addresses continue to deliver pharmaceutical spam subjects almost exclusively, with all of the top 15 subjects relating to this subject, whereas the .com traffic showed a curious tendency towards replica Rolexes.

.org showed a large amount of spam that had been “bounced back” to a forged “From” address, with one subject “you have received an Greeting eCard” (note the usual poor spelling) pointing to a URL that downloads an executable file and infects the computer.

Based on business and country domains and taken over one complete day in June the lists are as follows:

.com

1. Hello
2. Hi
3. RE: DISCOUNT 80% OFF on Pfizer
4. Replica Watches
5. Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
6. Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
7. Returned mail: see transcript for details
8. Exquisite Replica
9. Aloha
10. Failure notice
11. Hey
12. Cheers
13. Watches
14. Complete registration here
15. Subscribe on daily news?

.co.uk

1. RE: DISCOUNT 80% OFF on Pfizer
2. Salute, man!
3. All songs zipped
4. Photo gallery
5. Court decision
6. Photos of the place
7. Group these photos together
8. New .pdf variant
9. I’m locked in room
10. Can’t call you
11. Corporate meeting
12. Your house switched off
13. What’s with bar?
14. Add this to work
15. Wondering about slow speed?

.org

1. Delivery Status Notification (Delay)
2. Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
3. failure notice
4. Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
5. Hello
6. Hi
7. Returned mail: see transcript for details
8. RE: DISCOUNT 80% OFF on Pfizer
9. Replica Watches
10. Exquisite Replica
11. Mail delivery failed; returning message to sender
12. Hey
13. Watches
14. Cheers
15. You have received a Greeting eCard

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image credit: jurvetson