It’s been a dirty damn day
Today has been one of those days that make you just want to curl into a ball if you’re a computer professional.
One of our servers got hit with a worm, a friends blog got defaced, and another friend sent me an instant message asking if wuamk032.exe, rofl.exe, and edit.exe were normal to see in your task manager (um… no… they’re not…. your machine is owned).
So… for the 50,000th time… I beg all of you in intraweb land who use Windows:
STOP CLICKING ON EVERY DAMN ATTACHMENT YOU GET!!
I don’t care if it looks like it came from your priest, your grandmother, or God himself… if you weren’t expecting a file… don’t trust it.
Also, if your running windows, turn off the “Hide extensions for known file types” option. This has got to be the worst idea Microsoft has ever come up with (after Windows ME, of course).
KEEP YOUR ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE TURNED ON AND UPDATE IT ONCE A FRIGGIN’ WEEK!!
This is like buying a gun for home security, not buying bullets, and keeping it in a safe in the basement. It can’t help you unless its there, on, and ready. If you can’t update it because you didn’t pay for the service… quit being a tight-ass and pay for it now!
RUN WINDOWS UPDATE ONCE IN A WHILE… IT’S FREE, DAMN IT!!!!
Bejesus… if there is one thing you can do to make your life easier, it’s to patch your PC for KNOWN SECURITY FLAWS! The thing that people try to exploit. So enable automatic updates. At a minimum you need the “Notify me but don’t automatically download or install” option so at least it tells you there’s an update.
If you don’t do the three things I just mentioned, you deserve whatever happens to your PC. And no… I will not help you.
Right on man! Preach it! I would come to your church. Ok, seriously, I can relate to this post. Every machine I’m asked to work on outside of my job has a case of “my owner is an idiot!” What I do for the “tight asses” as you call them is install Avast Anti-Virus home edition because its free and has very very regular automatic updates. That’s what I use on my windows box too. You’re pointers are right on the money. In fact, I contemplated putting up a sign saying if 1, 2, and 3 aren’t met then get outa my face I want nothing to do with you. But hey! In my case it’s easy money.
Outa curiosity, what OS do you run. From the way the post sounds, you’re not running windows. I personally run Mandrake Linux.
1Services for the Church of the Intelligent User are every day, but sadly, our congregation is very small right now (it’s hard to find intelligent users)
The OS I run depends on what the machine is for (and I have a few boxes). I do use Windows XP for my gaming and general application box (because not all games will run on Linux). The web server runs Debian (command line only… no GUI installed).
I’m thinking about setting up another box with Ubuntu Linux just for giggles (it looks pretty cool).
2Dah what does all of this mean? What,s an antivirus? Whats a file type…….are we there yet… are we there yet? Whats Windows? Who is Microsoft Corp? Is this a computer, a spoon, a fork, or a server? Is all this .EXE stuff TERRORISIOM? Whats my name? And oh ya thanks for reminding me to buy bullets and a gun ;)…..now if my computer gets a virus I can just shoot it that will fix it! Hummm does this plug in here,,,shUIDGIGFDUGQWUGUKDJGX BXB pop fizzle sizzle is smoke bad coming off of this processor!……. opps guess not…. LOL
3Yup, smoke bad, if you let the smoke out of electronic components then the DataAnts can’t breathe!
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