Virus Warning

Increased email virus activity alert

We have seen a massive increase in emails coming in to us that are infected. A lot of these are "sent" by us according to the reply address. This is not the case, a number of our email addresses have been compromised by low-lifes who farm addresses from unprotected users' internet cache files, using a variety of hacks.

What can be done about it?
I've removed all "mailto:" references from every webpage. This will mean those addresses will no longer exist in web caches but it'll take some time to clear from the public domain. The only email address that we will now publish will be editorial@... and that will be in a trickier format so that it cannot be picked up by hacking tools, when I've found time to think of where to put it, where it'll be accessible.

What email addresses will be used?
Apart from editorial@, we will also use our own names (andy@, rich@, mark@, doug@), either with or without surnames.

What email addresses should I always ignore?
We never did use any of the generic section addresses, so roadtests@, tech@, events@, classic events@, lifestyle@, customs@ and anything like that can be discarded without any question at all.

Can I automatically filter out the dodgy ones?
You can use "Rules" in your email client, you can set your computer up to delete or otherwise deal with any incoming email address in whatever way you choose: best way is to set it up to delete ones that you know will never be used. Every email client I've used has the ability to do this, but if you've not used it yet, I can only recommend you read your help files.

Alternatively, most Internet Service providers give you the ability to blacklist addresses at source, or whitelist those addresses that you want to recieve emails from - often the quicker way if you don't want any unsolicited emails.

Any other recommendations?
Yes. Putting my other hat on, as a one-time IT consultant, just a few:

• Protect your system, with an up-to-date anti-virus package at the very least.
• Even if you have a firewall, back it up with something like WinPatrol and Ad-Aware which will pick up bits that have sneaked past the firewall. How? Because you browsed the web.
• If you do surf porn sites, expect more spam, more attempts to break into your system, and more chance of being compromised by hackers.
• Keep your operating system up to date - which isn't the same as upgrading your operating system to the latest version. All operating systems are "patched" from time-to-time as bugs are found. Bugs aren't found by mistake but are usually backdoors into your system found by hackers looking for information that might be useful to them. Most of you are on Windows, and most versions of Windows have a "Windows Update" icon on the start menu. Use it.
• If you are on broadband, make absolutely certain that you are behind a firewall - either the one built into XP (and updated regularly) or one from a reknowned software company, or else use a router with built-in firewall rather than a modem. If you have no such protection in place, XP-users should switch on the firewall, others should make certain that they disconnect from the web when not using it, and go down to your preferred shop and buy something.

As far as I'm concerned, ISP's should not be allowed to sell broadband connections without alerting users to the risks - and the risks are great.

If you have a moment, imagine how many peddlers of kiddyporn are out there looking for commercial webservers to hold their images, in a world that is increasingly closing their doors on them. Then imagine how delighted they would be if they could get a webserver for free, with lots of disk space and little chance of getting caught. If you have an unsecured broadband connection, you might be that webserver.

And when you've imagined how many people that might be, be aware that they are the tip of the iceberg, you've then got hard core pornographers, hackers, pirates and a few others who would all benefit from such free webspace.

On the bright side, if they are camping on your computer, you will be unaware of it until you unexpectedly run out of disk space. The directories they use will be hidden, so you won't see what they've buried there, but neither can the police if they track back the images to you via your IP address. On the downside, in extreme circumstances, the only way you can get rid of the stuff is to reformat your computer.

Scared yet? If not, if you're unprotected, you should be. I used to make a living digging people out of the mire and it's good money, and there's no shortage of work. And that was with ISDN before Broadband got a major hold.