Tuesday, March 31, 2009

No Joke

While tomorrow is April 1st, the concern about the Conficker Worm is no joke. On Sunday, 60 Minutes had a segment about this computer hacker worm.


From 60 Minutes: Lesley Stahl conversation with Steve Trilling, a Symantec vice president

"You sell the anti-virus, anti-worm stuff. I mean, how do I know you're not just saying, 'Go out and get this,' 'cause you sell it? I mean, you know… there's a sort of conflict of interest here," Stahl pointed out.

"Well look, Lesley, in 60 minutes we are blocking nearly 400,000 threats around the world. If you're goin' out on the Internet and you're not protected, it's like walkin' outta your house and leavin' the door open," Trilling argued.

I can't help but wonder how much of this virus is hyped by the companies like Symantec that sell anti-virus software. They certainly benefit by mass panic.

I have noticed some phishy emails from "Facebook Friends" as well as suspicious messages on my FaceBook account. At least 90% of my emails are junk (or worse). Spam filters only do so much. I have a rule of thumb, "When in doubt Junk it out"

I have decided to stay away from FaceBook & Twitter for awhile as I see more potential for harm than good.

It's been fun while it lasted.

4 comments:

terri said...

The company I work for can't keep the spam out. If a company with an entire IT department can't prevent spam, how are we supposed to?

I paid Norton (Symantec) $140 to remove a virus. I asked my husband, "Isn't that why I pay for an annual subscription for antivirus software?" It didn't make sense.

Rock, Paper, Scissors said...

I'm going to show my husband this. I didn't trust facebook from the beginning but he has also had suspicious messages and yet he still doesn't take me seriously.

Tara R. said...

I get more spam at work than any other place. I'm staying away from Facebook for the same reason as you. I only follow bloggers I know on Twitter and keep that number low. Wordpress spam blocker works pretty well and if it goes get back, I can turn off comments after 14 days. That helps too.

I have Macs at home and they are great at being virtually virus proof.

Anonymous said...

i don't understand the whole "mac is virus free" thing. if that is so, why can't they make windows like that? also, i hate the big viris software companies. they never run smoothly and they are just a pain. i've been using AVAST (it's free) for several years and have never had a virus or worm get thru.