Re: question about virus today & e-mail scanners

["L. S. Russell" <leslier@xxxxxxxxxx>]

WinProxy, which runs on NT, allows you to scan incoming messages for
infection. For a nominal fee they will update the virus portion of the
scanner automatically on a regular basis. 

But beyond that, I think it is bad advice to say you shouldn't run
scan/clean or a similar option at least weekly. The monkey virus
infected the MBR and used a stealth technique to hide from some virus
scanners. To hide it would set itself in place of the normal method your
pc used to access the MBR. But all it really did was propagate by
overwriting the MBR of any unprotected disks. 

I would say that if you don't run scan/clean your odds of getting some
kind of virus increase greatly. Compare that with the chances, if any,
of activating a virus payload by running scan/clean. I have never heard
of this happening, not saying it couldn't but Monkey didn't do it and I
don't know of any other that does. But if they can write it to activate
its payload when you run scan/clean they can write it to activate when
you run scan/warn. 
Given the number of viruses out there even if there is one with those
characteristics you would still be better off running scan/clean
automatically nightly. 

--
L. S. Russell Programmer/Analyst
Datrek Professional Bags, Inc.
2413 Industrial Drive
Springfield, TN. 37172
mailto:leslier@datrek.com
http://www.datrek.com
--
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