Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Always Use Protection

My 15-year old daughter caught a nasty virus because she didn't use protection. Okay, folks, I know what you're thinking, but get your minds out of the gutter...I'm talking about her laptop.

This kid spends every spare minute on her laptop, IMing her friends, and visiting MySpace and Facebook. So when she received an email from her friend, Morgan, with an attachment entitled, Look at these Great Pictures!, she didn't think twice about it; she opened the attachment and let the Trojan Horse into the city.

Almost immediately, her computer began convulsing, bringing up strange websites in rapid succession and no matter how desperately she tried to close them, more would appear. She shut her computer down but it was too late. As soon as she opened it, the strange, rolling websites reappeared. I told her to run her Norton Anti-Virus, and she confessed that she had been ignoring the update messages for more than a month. Her subscription had expired and she was no longer protected. As she so aptly said, she is now in computer hell, unable to recreate freely. I told her not to send me ANYTHING. Although I do have antivirus protection, this thing has me so scared that I don't want to risk catching it. I've backed up all of my manuscripts and research material, and tomorrow I'll bring her laptop to a computer shop for diagnosis and (fingers crossed) a cure.



So remember, folks, if you value the health of your computer...always use your antivirus protection!

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