[Sosfbay-discuss] Fwd: [BASC Chat] Big Computer Virus Coming (No Joke)

[cls at truffula.sj.ca.us]

If it says "Please forward this to all your friends right away," don't.
It's a chain letter.  Break the chain.

Yes there is a "postcard virus."  No, it is not new and different.
It's just one of several dangerous email worms.
No, it will not damage your hard drive.  Yes, it can severely damage
your Microsoft Windows file system that calls itself "drive C:."

So can lots of other email worms.  If you choose to use Microsoft
Windows, you have chosen a life long battle against email worms
and other malicious software.  It's got by far the worst malware
problem of any brand of operating system.  You should be prepared
to lose that battle now and then.  Back up any files you can't
afford to lose.  Keep your installation disks and be ready to
reinstall your system.  Microsoft Windows just kills itself sometimes!
Removing an email worm payload can be far more difficult than
just reinstalling.  Reinstalling is the only *sure* cure.  Being
able to do that is more important than fooling around with
"anti virus" stuff.

About four years ago the Green Party of Santa Clara County
endorsed my project of distributing alternatives to the
commercial software monopoly.  Since then, major products of
the free software community have been part of our tabling
literature and we've given away dozens of office suites,
Internet suites, and complete operating system distributions.
I try to keep a set on the literature rack at the San Jose
Peace Center, but someone keeps taking them.
If the boss says "you must use Microsoft here," fine, that's
the company's headache.  But you do *not* need to put up with it
for the things you do in your life any more.  Advocates of software
freedom tend to oversell the alternatives.  NO software system
is truly debugged and user-friendly.  We can't take all your
software headaches away.  But we can trade you one set of problems
for another, and I truly believe our set is easier to manage.

In particular, I don't know of any Linux virus truly successful
in the wild.  There have been worms that attack servers, but
none has ever succeeded on the "workstation" setup you'd use at
home and on the road.  Zero viruses in seventeen years of trying.
That "postcard virus" only attacks Microsoft systems.  Get a
Macintosh or migrate your PC to the stuff we give away, and you
don't have to worry about that threat any more.

Cameron