Currently doing the rounds: a virus attached to a very official-looking email purporting to be from Microsoft that informs you it's a security patch and you should apply it immediately. This prays on gullible folks who are already paranoid because of the constant stream of real security updates required by Microsoft software. I bet it will catch a lot of people.
So far I've received three copies, originating from different networks (inter.net, jaring.my and skanova.net) and having slightly different to/from headers. But they certainly look good - all the embedded links go to real places on Microsoft's website and they use Microsoft icons, colors and layout. Very sneaky.
Back in the day before HTML email, it was much harder to fool people because email was plain text. Now, you can recreate a company's branding in an instantly recognizable way and draw in a much larger crowd of victims.
I'm not sure whether this counts as another strike against HTML email or against Microsoft's security record or against the overall usefulness of email itself as we drown in a sea of spam and virus attacks...

Sean, I get bombarded with these stupid email hoaxes from "Microsoft" all day! I wish I could track the people down who send this crap out and kick them in the face. :-)

My windows XP has been bombarding me, not with email links, but with pop-ups on the tool bar, accompanied by a yellow lockplate or shield with a keyhole in it, that tell me to click here to fix an important security problem. I would simply click it off, and when turning off the computer it would tell me it would automatically update, but offer an option to turn off without updating. After taking that option a few times in a row, it automatically began updating whether I told it to or not. Yesterday as I turned it off, the screen told me it was installing an important update and it would go off automatically when it was finished-- and whatever the h*** (I want to resort to cursing here) it was doing to my computer, it took 40 minutes to go off. Presumably I was completely updated (or my computer completely infested)-- but when I turned it on next, the same message popped up from the toolbar-- important security update!

This morning as I was working I got the same damned thing-- Windows was going to need to restart my machine to install an important security update-- having been beaten into submission, I told it to do it now-- did so-- it went off, came back on again-- and the popup from the toolbar told me I need a security update.

Please forgive a stranger with a murky story and a bewildering problem-- but I went to the Microsoft website, and there seems to be no "there" there.

Note that none of this involves an email-- these are popups.

I have ANYTHING being done to my computer against my will and without my understanding, but Windows has given itself that privilege. Only-- how do I know what is really Windows? And how do I know what that icon that pops up-- a golden shield (probably a lockplate) with a keyhole in it-- signifies. I know it slows down my computer-- when booting up, that's the last thing I have to wait for to pop up on the tool bar

If anyone can provide any information, has any ideas about what might be going on, I'd much appreciate an email.

Many thanks.

Barbara, I have no idea whether you have a virus or whether this is just Windows being more annoying than usual. Windows seems to want to update itself a lot because it has lots of security problems. I try hard not to run Windows except when absolutely necessary because of that sort of problem. It's why I only own Apple Macs...

Thanks for your reply Sean. I can see i may have to have the computer checked for a virus. I need a new computer and considering a Mac, but I do use, and am very comfortable with, a PC-- and don't really like the interface on my daughter's Mac when I'm at her house using it (although perhaps this could be changed by user option?) Also, it's not as if Apples are Bill Gates-free-- he went in and kept Apple on artificial life support for a time, didn't he, so as to maintain the appearance of choice. In fact, so concerned am I about Mr. Gates that if Linux were user-friendly and easier to learn I would use it.

Meanwhile I have a PC, ten years of files on it in an old (pre Bill Gates-owning) version of Corel, and a concern that whatever computer I end up with is able to read my files.

This is so long and it is to you-- you don't have to post it to the public if you don't want to!

Maybe (do you think it's possible) someone else will have some ideas about what's going on with my infernal machine before I turn a V-squad at the local computer store loose on it.

Many thanks, B

Hi Barbara, I switched my wife - a long, long time Windows user - to a Mac some years back and it took her a couple of months to fully adjust. Now she tells everyone to get a Mac and thinks they're just great. She loves not having the blue screens and the constant security updates and virus alerts.

A Mac can easily be completely Bill Gates-free if you want. Apple do an amazing office suite called iWork for just $80 that reads and writes all those MS documents. Microsoft had nothing to do with Apple's success - if anything Apple have succeeded in spite of Microsoft.

The new Macs now allow you to run Windows as well - either through Bootcamp where you choose at startup whether you want to run Windows or Mac OS X, or through VMware which lets you run Windows *at the same time* as Mac OS X. I have certain Windows-only software that I run on VMware and it works just fine. I can even treat the "captive" Windows system as a separate computer and access it over the network from my Mac or from other Windows machines.

What my wife did was to keep her old Windows machine and just pulls files off it as needed onto her Mac or onto Windows running on her Mac (using VMware).

Hope that helps?

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