High-risk activities and Places

The types of activities performed on your PC also contribute to your risk, whether high or low. Each of these activities is related to how social you permit your computer to be. Do you often take it out in public where it can exchange information with other computers? In the analogy between biological viruses and computer viruses, a high degree of socialization (mingling with others) increases risk. The following sections look at some examples.

Wireless “Hot Spots”

Hoping to attract well-to-do customers, many public establishments such as coffee houses, restaurants, and other businesses have installed so-called Internet hot spots. These hot spots are Internet connections that a customer can use to connect to the Internet with a laptop computer, provided it’s equipped with a wireless networking (also called Wi-Fi or 802.11) capability. Some establishments charge a fee for the use of their hot spots; others permit use free of charge.

People who own laptops equipped with those Wi-Fi connections can visit any of the hundreds of thousands of Wi-Fi–equipped establishments and access the Internet to retrieve e-mail, visit Web sites, or whatever they do on the Internet. At a coffeehouse, for instance, you would purchase your tall double-shot vanilla low-fat latte and then sit down at one of the tables, turn on your laptop, and catch up on e-mail while quaffing your favorite coffee drink.

But here’s the problem: These hot-spot connections have many of the same risks that are associated with always-on high-speed connections. Hackers and worms frequently scan the wireless networks in these establishments, hoping to find new victims — like, f’rinstance, and your computer. Computers lacking adequate antivirus protection fall victim to the worm and become one of those zombie computers, awaiting the commands from their fiendish master.

Downloading and file sharing

If you or someone with access to your computer is doing a lot of file and program downloading and file sharing with others, chances are that sooner or later one of the files you download will be infected with a virus.

Because many viruses travel from computer to computer by hiding inside of software program files, it makes sense that the more program files you bring into your system, the more likely it will be that one of them will have a virus. Also, program files that have been copied from other computers (rather than coming directly from the manufacturer) have a much greater chance of being infected with a virus.

Instant messaging (Like yahoo, skype, msn)

If you are an Instant Messaging (IM) user, you are increasing your chances of catching a virus (or, of course a worm, Trojan, or other ill fate).  As the popularity of IM rises, so too does this get the attention of virus writers looking for new ways to get viruses from one computer to another. Already, there have been a number of worms that have propagated themselves using IM. Every day, minute by minute, you can be sure that there will have been more such incidents.

Add-on programs

If you are the type who can’t resist an online or computer store bargain, sooner or later something you pick up will have a little extra feature. While it doesn’t happen often, viruses have been known to sneak onto the gold (or final) version of a software manufacturer’s CD-ROM or online download area.  And remember virus writers like to get their viruses to propagate in large numbers. That means, some spend considerable time trying to get their wares into programs that will be mass-marketed or mass-distributed.

Sharing your e-mail address with too many other people and organizations

Persons who have a habit of signing up for things on the Internet are far more likely to end up on one or more spammers’ lists. Or if you are the type of person whose e-mail address is “in circulation” — meaning your e-mail address appears online in Web sites, chat rooms, mailing lists, newsgroups, and so forth — then the chances improve that your e-mail address will be picked up and wind up in the hands of one or more mass marketers. As soon as this happens, one or more of the spammers who like to send large volumes (we’re talking millions) of virus-laden e-mail messages will take advantage of the target you’ve given them.

This is not unlike giving out your phone number to lots of different people and organizations, only to discover that you are beginning to receive far more unwanted phone calls than before. So it is with e-mail. It’s the fastest possible way to infest your once-pristine inbox with more unwanted mail than legitimate mail. In my case, about three-fourths of all the e-mail I receive is spam. My e-mail address appears in my online column in Computer World. Of course, the address I use there is different from any I use anywhere else  and it isn’t hard to see why: Soon after I started writing my column, I began to receive additional spam, much of it sent to that unique address. This occurs because some spammers have spider programs that run all over the Web in search of e-mail addresses to harvest from Web sites.

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