Protecting your computer from viruses

What is a computer virus and how do I get one?

If you depend on the information stored on your personal computer, you need to understand how computer viruses spread, and you should use anti-virus software to reduce the chance that a computer virus will infect your programs and files.

A computer virus is a program that makes copies of itself and infects files. Computer viruses can spread to other computers and files whenever infected files are exchanged. Often infected files come as email attachments, even from people you know. The email senders have no idea that they are passing on a file with a virus in it.

Some computer viruses can erase or change the information stored on your computer, other viruses may do little or no harm to your system. Writing and releasing any virus is prohibited by university policy, and anyone who does so will be held legally accountable for damages.

How do I protect my computer?

There are several things that you should do to protect your computer from virus infections:

• Use a high-quality anti-virus program, and be sure to update it regularly. Use it to scan any files, programs, software, or diskettes (even new software from a commercial company) before you use them on your computer.
• Make back-up copies of important documents or files and store them on separate diskettes. Making backups will also protect your information against accidental file deletion, diskette failure, and other damage.
• Whenever you use a computer in a campus lab, be sure to reboot or run "cleanup" before you start your session and log out when you end your session.
• Do not share commerical software with anyone. It is a violation of the author's copyright to distribute such material, and it is a way to spread viruses.
• When you get public domain (PD) software for which the author has granted permission to make copies, get it from a reliable source. (For example, and individual you do not know is not a reliable source.) Before you run PD material, use an anit-virus program to inspect for known viruses.
• Always scan your disks and files after using them on another computer.
• Always scan all files you download from the Internet.
• Always scan Word or Excel file email attachments before you read them.

How do I get anti-virus software?

You should install the latest versions of anti-virus software on your desktop computer to protect it from viruses. McAfee's VirusScan is recommended for the Windows environment and Virex for the Macintosh. Both of these products are included in the UW Internet Connectivity Kit (UWICK), a cd-rom available at the University Book Store and its campus branches.

You also can download anti-virus software directly from the Web. The Software Guide provides descriptions and downloading instructions for both VirusScan and Virex.

How should I configure my anti-virus software?

What if my computer gets a virus?

Not all damage to your programs and files is caused by viruses: worn out floppies, failing hard drives, user error, and poorly written programs can all cause you to lose data. If your computer is behaving strangely, or if you think your computer has a virus, use an anti-virus program to find out.

If your computer is infected with a virus, DON'T PANIC! Use an anti-virus program to remove the virus yourself, or turn your computer off and find someone who knows how to remove the virus.

If a virus is active in memory, it may prevent anti-virus programs from working correctly. To be sure no virus is active, turn off your computer and reboot from a known-clean system diskette before you begin the disinfection process.

Eliminate all copies of the virus as quickly as possible. Check all your diskettes, and warn anyone else who may have infected files or disks.

Remember, most viruses can be removed without permanent damage to your system, and most virus infections can be prevented. With proper care, your computer can remain virus-free.

What if I think my computer is infected with a virus?

If you have reason to suspect your computer is infected with a virus (you have opened a suspicious e-mail attachment, your computer is suddenly crashing or running slowly, you receive error messages whenever you start up your computer or try to launch an application, a friend or colleague has warned you that they have received an infected e-mail attachment from you), then:

1. Immediately disconnect your computer from the network to prevent the virus from spreading further or e-mailing out copies of your personal documents. If you have a wireless network adapter, you will need to both unplug your network cord and disable your wireless connection. Most notebooks with wireless have a physical button or switch to power off the wireless card.
   
   
2. Check to see if your virus protection is up-to-date and scan your hard drive for viruses. Instructions are available at:
   • What if my PC gets a virus?
   • What if my Macintosh gets a virus?

How do I check for and remove Adware and Spyware from my computer?

nyone who browses the web, uses instant messaging software, or file sharing software with a Windows computer is very likely to have software installed on their computer without their knowledge. Such software, called Spyware and Adware, will slow down the computer or even, in some cases, cause the computer to stop working. In an attempt to help combat this problem, the College has purchased a site license for a plugin to McAfee VirusScan 8.5 called the McAfee AntiSpyware Module. More information is available on the McAfee AntiSpyware website.

What is a computer virus, trojan or adware?

A virus is computer program whose purpose is to propagate itself by traveling from file to file and from computer to computer, often destroying files in the process. Computer viruses spread by several means, including floppy and zip disks, e-mail attachments, web pages, and file-sharing. The best way to prevent viruses from infecting your computer files is to ensure that you have adequate virus-protection software installed on your computer.

A trojan is a computer program whose purpose is to leave the infected computer open for hackers to gain access and install software, look at personal files, or use the computer for illegal purposes. Some trojans are not as harmful as others, but if you do find a trojan on your computer please strongly consider backing up, formatting, and reinstalling Windows. Trojans usually infect computers through unpatched security holes in Windows and Internet Explorer.

Adware and spyware are computer programs that can do a wide range of things. Two of the main purposes are to collect data from your computer and report it back to the company, and to display popup windows of ads whether or not you are viewing websites at the time. These programs can get onto the computer any number of ways. The most common ways are as part of freeware programs such as file sharing programs, by displaying confusing dialog boxes on websites to confuse people into clicking Yes to install them, or through security holes in Internet Explorer while you browse websites.

Because of these dangers, Wellesley College provides McAfee VirusScan to protect against viruses and trojans, and McAfee AntiSpyware to protect against adware and spyware..

How To Protect My Computer From Viruses?

In short, if you want to guarantee protection, don't use email or the Internet. However, for most people that is not an option and with a few basic precautions you should be able to enjoy relatively safe surfing.

Why so many people enjoy hacking is one of the great mysteries of the web. The majority of hackers are not financially motivated; they do it for 'fun' or to make life difficult for corporations they perceive as enemies, like Microsoft.

In fact Microsoft's predominance of the market has led to it being targeted on many occasions and so when attacks are made on Microsoft they tend to be the kind of viruses that affect home computers which use Microsoft operating systems.

Visits Visiting to the Microsoft website will keep you updated, and the company regularly post 'patches' which repair known security weaknesses and help keep machines safe. See www.microsoft.com/uk/security/protect/alert.mspx for more information.

However, there is also a great deal of unpleasant behaviour from adult pornography distributors and organised crime has got in on the act with attacks on bank accounts.

The problem is that as the Internet connects so many millions of users, it can literally take a few minutes to spread a virus across tens of thousands of machines. At worst, they can strip vital financial data from your computer or even destroy the machine, and even at best they pollute your drives and strip email address books so that they can self-proliferate.

A virus is a computer program that can copy itself over and over again and so spread from one user to the next. They mainly spread through emails, but a lot of viruses spread via adult websites, (so tip number one: Don't visit them). And as for emails, there is one essential you should know. Viruses DON'T get passed by text-only emails. They usually have some type of attachment enclosed - and it is the attachment that contains the virus program.

If you receive an email that contains an attachment, make sure you know who has sent it. And because many viruses are spread through the mailboxes of infected machines - if you didn't expect an email (with an attachment) from a friend or colleague, then check with them first before opening it. It may seem a bore, but if their pc was infected, the email may have been generated without their knowledge. It won't affect you, as long as you don't open it.

Should I use special software?

In short, yes. Although most viruses don't do too much damage, the bad ones can and it is not worth taking the risk of losing everything you ever had on your PC.

Antivirus software gives protection for known viruses. If it recognises a virus hidden on your computer it will disable it or quarantine it and prevent any harm being done.

The major anti-virus software companies are constantly striving to keep pace with the latest attacks, and whenever their update their software, you too can update your own protection. By regularly updating your anti-virus 'definitions' (by an automated process, or by visiting their website) you can keep the most harmful viruses at bay.

There are free anti-virus programs (e.g.Kaspersky Anti-Virus Pro) and often they are given free with computing magazines.

The biggest names in professional virus protection software are Norton AntiVirus (www.symantec.com/index.htm) or McAfee VirusScan (www.mcafee.com) These can be purchased from their websites for a fee (try an evaluation pack if offered). You can also buy them at most computer dealerships.

Most are very simple to install and all you have to do is to decide when you want the updates to be delivered straight to your computer.

The benefits of the paid-for services is that their business depends on being up-to-date and protecting their customers. Many are also used in corporate environments, so you are getting the best brains on the job who are most likely to be aware of the newest and most sophisticated attacks.

Dads and Technology Collide at Geekdad

here are days when my husband and I look at each other and wonder what we've gotten ourselves into. Our kids are adorable and relatively well-behaved (as much as a 2-year-old and 4-month-old can be), but that doesn't make it any easier. We laugh, we cry, and we try to enjoy the wild ride as much as we can. That said, it's nice to know that there are others out there that are going through the same thing.

Enter the parent blogging community. Parent blogs come in all shapes and sizes. In fact, Mommy blogs are a genre of their own. There are some phenomenal Mommy bloggers out there, and I'll be sharing some of them with you in the next few weeks. To kick things off, though, I'm starting with a more rare breed: The Daddy Blogger!

This is not to say that dads don't blog. They certainly do. But most of them don't blog about being dads. It's too bad, because when you read Geekdad, you'll see that Daddy bloggers can have a lot of cool stuff to say.

Geekdad is the site for parents who haven't quite grown up, who revel in all things techie, and who just want to have fun with their kids. From science experiments to the latest video game to homemade light sabers and kitchen sets, Geekdad highlights the geekiest fun around. Go visit. He'll make you want to be geeky too.

Internet Safety for Teachers and Students

From the experience gained in many years of working with the use of the Internet in education CIESE has come to the realization that it is important to balance protecting students with the need to utilize the technology to its full potential. For these reasons, rather than advocating policies that completely restrict students and teachers in regards to the content of their web sites, we advocate the following:

Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) - These are basically "contracts" that outline how students can use the technology, what they cannot do with it and the consequences for violating the policy. These should include school web pages and the content that is allowed on them. AUPs should be signed by an authorized representative of the school, students and parents so that all concerned parties are aware of the policy.

No Student Names - We recommend that when referring to students on a web page that either their names not be used or only their first names be posted. Some schools have found the use of "nicknames" to be an effective way of dealing with this issue.

Student Pictures - Although we do encourage the posting of student work that may include student pictures, we strongly encourage teachers to get written permission to post student pictures and work before placing it onto the web. We have found that most schools already have such permission slips for use when student pictures are placed in newspapers. These can often be re-worded to cover the issue of posting to the web.

School or Classroom Web Pages - It is important that teachers and students recognize that a web site that refers to their school or district represents them in cyberspace just as a school newsletter or yearbook represents the school in their community. Because of this they need to respect the interests of the schools system and post only appropriate materials to the web site. What is "appropriate" regarding content should be clearly defined in the schools AUP .

Pornography in Schools – How to Use the Internet Safety Kit Protocol

There has been a tremendous amount of media coverage in the last month about the problem of pornography coming into the school environment via the Internet. A positive outcome of this can be a change in awareness for school administrations and Boards of Trustees resulting in quicker implementation of the key recommendations of the Internet Safety Kit for establishing a safe Internet learning environment.

The downside of so much publicity can be if those managing schools assume that all schools have problems with staff or students accessing pornography and thus they needn't react to such an incident at their school with too much alarm. If any Principals or Trustees have the impression that serious pornography situations are commonplace, then the publicity has been very misleading. Right now such incidents are relatively rare. If a school is unfortunate enough to have such a problem, especially with the more serious illegal child pornography, it needs to be dealt with quickly, efficiently and with the thorough approach such an incident warrants.

The Internet Safety Kit has a protocol for an incident involving pornography being discovered in a school. This protocol is being expanded for the new version of the Kit to be released next year to differentiate between staff and student incidents and legal (but not appropriate in school) and illegal pornography. Trustees can support the Principal to ensure a comprehensive response.

School Trustees can access the Kit protocol here.

If your school has just had a serious incident of misuse, download this off the NetSafe^® website and go through it step by step. If you have questions, or need assistance in any way, you can call the Internet Safety Group at (09) 372 5864 or toll free 0508 NETSAFE (638 723). Those numbers reach me in my office and I can take you through the process over the phone.

I strongly recommend that school Trustees and Principals do not wait for an incident of misuse in their schools to look over the protocol. If your school is offering Internet access and does not have any of the recommended safety infrastructure in place, do not wait. Start now. When you are in the midst of dealing with a serious, stressful incident is not the time to be putting proper procedures in place.

Download the Kit if you no longer have the original. Adapt the sample Internet Use Policy, Use Agreements for students and staff, protocol and recommended procedures to your school's particular needs. Educate students and staff as part of creating a culture of Internet safety in your school. Such preparation lays a solid foundation for a positive Internet learning experience for all.

If you then have a serious incident, all systems are in place and the response is relatively straightforward. But perhaps the process of establishing a safe Internet learning environment, and the education that is such a crucial part of the process, will actually help your school avoid an incident as serious as one involving child pornography.

Combined Strategy for Internet Safety

The Internet is a valuable educational and social resource for children. However, it can also expose our children to danger through their discovery of inappropriate materials and experiences. Though the public debate over Internet safety has been cast in terms of whether or not filters are desirable or effective, the most important way to keep kids safe on the Internet is to teach them to make wise choices about what they view and what they participate in, such as chat rooms. The ability to make responsible choices is important since the Web can be accessed ubiquitously—in the home, school, or library.

What the Internet provides
With a few clicks of the mouse, a child could access the complete literary works of Shakespeare and a detailed mapping of the social structure of an ant colony. But sexual predators can also use the Internet to meet and establish a "dialogue" with a large universe of potentially vulnerable children. Through search engines such as Google, a child trying to find images of dolls can type "doll pictures" and obtain a number of legitimate sites. However, if the child used Internet slang and typed "doll pics," the sites that would come up would be very different indeed—and highly disturbing to many.

For kids, the Internet and associated technologies are a rich environment that includes not only Web browsers and e-mail but also instant messaging, chat rooms, peer-to-peer connections, Usenet groups, MP3 (digital audio) players, and wireless devices such as cell phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants, such as Palm Pilots). Kids can access the Web from home, friend's homes, school, libraries, Internet cafes, coffee shops, and wireless, all of which makes direct supervision difficult.

Educating a child for safety
No one single solution exists to protect kids on the Internet. Rather, protection has to rest on social and educational strategies to teach responsible and safe use coupled with technology, public policy, and law enforcement to shape the environment in which choice is exercised.

A foundational component of Internet safety education is parent involvement and supervision. Parents should become aware of the types of good and bad material and experiences that are available online; their son's or daughter's experience online may be vastly different from their own. For that matter, a child's experience away from school could also differ dramatically with that in the classroom.

An acceptable use policy (AUP), an Internet-use "contract" in the form of a written set of guidelines commonly found in schools but also relevant to home use, is another useful educational tool. While these agreements may vary in form, they usually contain the basic elements described in the box, right. Most importantly, using an AUP with a child provides parents with a great opportunity to have some extended conversations about what acceptable use really means in the home in practice.

The role of schools
Besides parents at home, school administrators can promote these educational strategies. Indeed, parents send their children to school with the expectation that school personnel will take responsible care to protect them from harm and to provide adequate instruction. As such, the Internet should be used to support learning and integrated into the regular curriculum as a tool for learning. Teachers, parents, and kids should clearly understand a school's AUP, and class time should be spent discussing it. Enforcement of the AUP is essential, but should be sufficiently flexible so that inadvertent violations are seen as "learning opportunities" rather than automatic occasions for punishment. Teachers should have immediate control of technology in the classroom so they can override technology protections that inadvertently get in the way of instruction.

Schools must use the Internet with realistic expectations about its role in teaching and learning, understanding its strengths and weaknesses. Internet safety instruction ought to be a prerequisite for school-provided Internet access. Older students, who are more Web savvy and computer literate than younger students, could serve as Internet tutors and guides. Some instruction in media literacy could be integrated into the curriculum at all levels as an essential dimension of scholarship and learning. Ideally, teachers would be offered professional development opportunities by their school district to understand the importance of media literacy on the Internet and how to teach it.

The PTA has an important role to play, as well. In collaboration with the PTA, schools could offer programs to parents or guardians wanting to know more about Internet safety and on maintaining open communication between parents and adolescents. For example, parents need to realize that the needs and patterns of appropriate Internet usage may be quite different for a 13-year-old than a 17-year-old.

Technology, public policy, and law enforcement
The discussion above is not to say that technology and policy cannot be helpful. Technology-based tools, such as filters, provide parents and other responsible adults with additional choices as to how best to fulfill their responsibilities. Filters, for example, can be highly effective in reducing access to inappropriate sexually explicit material if the inability to access large amounts of appropriate material is acceptable. A recent study of the Kaiser Family Foundation concluded that when filters are set on their least restrictive setting, they can block most sexually explicit material while allowing users access to health information.

Law and regulation can help to shape the environment in which these strategies and tools are used by reducing at least to some extent the availability of inappropriate sexually explicit material on the Internet, for example, by creating incentives and disincentives for responsible business behavior. Because federal laws regarding obscenity were not enforced during the 1990s (the time during which the use of the Internet exploded), there is much uncertainty today about the extent to which these laws could be enforced. Today, particularly egregious Internet examples of sexually explicit material could be prosecuted, and the results might well provide incentives for various suppliers of such material to find other lines of business.

In the end, however, filters do not provide a complete, or even a nearly complete, solution to the problem, and law enforcement alone cannot make our children safe. It's helpful to think of kids and swimming pools, which are both fun and dangerous for children. Locks, fences, pool covers, alarms, and liability for irresponsible owners are all helpful elements of protecting our children. But it's clear that the best thing one can do to protect a child near a swimming pool is to teach him or her how to swim.

Tips for Using a Public PC

Using a public computer to check your e-mail, bank accounts and travel arrangements may be more convenient than lugging around a laptop when traveling. But it's also more dangerous. PCs are easily located at Internet cafes, airports, libraries, hotel business centers and other public places. Unfortunately, unscrupulous souls target these machines in an attempt to hijack your sensitive information. To reduce the risk, consider these safety tips:

Scope out the snoops. Look around to see if anyone is watching you. This is particularly important if you are accessing a password-protected account. Someone could be observing and recording your private information.

Be wary of accessing your private data. Doing online banking, stock trades and other financial transactions is not a good idea. Neither is entering your credit card number to shop online. It's possible that a hi-tech thief may have installed keylogger software on the computer. It secretly records your key strokes, then e-mails it to him. Armed with that information, he can access your accounts--bad news.

Log out. If you've accessed a website that requires a login (for instance, your e-mail account), make sure to log out by clicking the appropriate link (usually locate at the top right of the page).

Close the browser. For extra protection, close all browser windows and any other programs that may be running.

Don't leave the computer unattended. If you have to leave temporarily, log out and close the program you are using. Don't just minimize the window.

Don't let the computer save your login information. Some programs offer to save your user name and password. Click "No" if a pop-up box offers this option. Some web browsers record this information anyway, so before you start surfing, disable this feature. Here's how to do it with Internet Explorer 7:

• On the menu bar, click Tools, then Internet Options from the drop-down list.
• Click the Content tab, then Settings in the AutoComplete section.
• Uncheck any boxes that are checked, then click OK to close the AutoComplete Settings and click OK to close the Internet settings.

Cover your tracks. You can delete the record of the sites you visited and any cookies that may be stored on the computer. Here's how:

• On the menu bar, click Tools, then Internet Options from the drop-down list.
• Click the General tab, then Delete in the Browsing History section.
• In the Delete Browsing History box, click Delete All.

Consider fellow surfers. Avoid opening suspicious e-mail attachments or downloading software. Don't do anything that may potentially infect the computer and cause problems for the next user.