Microsoft, in particular, has listened to feed back from lots of different people and is developing a modification to Outlook that will pretty much render these things harmless. (See related story that tells how to get the modification).

To protect yourself in the meantime, you need to understand basically four things about the current crop. They will arrive as an attachment to an e-mail message, will be from someone you know, will look harmless and will offer a plausible reason for opening them.

They arrive as an attachment to an e-mail message. Under normal circumstance, e-mails do not have attachments. Whenever you get one, unless you were expecting something from that person, be afraid, very afraid, or at least darn cautious. Do not open it. I never open unsolicited attachment on anything but my sacrificial lamb machine, which is always well backed up and loaded down with lots of defensive software.

They will be from some one you know. One of these things that makes these viruses so dangers is that they mail everyone in a friends address book. That includes you. It may even come from an office colleague. When they get into a big, corporate mailing list, that’s how they spread really fast. Again, if you weren’t expecting it don’t open it.

They will look harmless. By default, Windows hides file extensions that are know to it. For example, a file called Love Letter.vbs would just show up as a Love Letter. A good plan is to right click on the file name and look at the properties of the file. Remember that Windows know allows file name of any links, so a common trick is to rename the virus that looks quiet harmless. Love Letter .vbs, for example could be renamed to Budget, xls , vbs, or ReadMe.txt.vbs. If you haven’t expressly configured windows to show all file extensions, you won’t see the vbs part, unless you know to right click and look at properties.

They will offer a plausible reason for opening them. The Bad Guys expect people to be cautious, so they devise subtle tricks. One of the cleverest variations of LoveLetter virus called mother day. The accompanying e-mail said something like" Thank for the order. Your credit card has been billed $375.00 for diamonds for mothers day. They attachment invoice is your proof of purchase. Please print it out and keep it for verification ."This is called social engineering, and if it had been the version that came out before people had been warned and had their guards up, goodness know what damage it would have done.

To protect yourself from viruses , you should keep your anti-virus up to date, and install Microsoft security patches as they are releases. But the single most important thing you can do is to learn is to stop opening e-mail attachments.

If your anti-virus program ever detects something called a Back Door Trojan, you have been hacked and probably are still be hacked. Back doors are programs designed to let some one else control your computer remotely. You might as well cancel all your credit cards and change all your passwords, cause the hackers probably already have them. They probably got your social security number, so watch out for fraudulent use of that, too. As well as immediately removing the back door, you need to harden your system, or the will put it right back.

Virus are the best know threat to home users, but know that so many people are getting some form of always-on Internet connection, you very much run the risk of being hacked. I finally manage to get a digitally subscriber line resonantly, as soon as I got it live, I probed my system from another connection and was shocked to find it was wide open to the Internet. Any Hacker who bothered to look at my system would have been able to connect to it within a matter of minutes and would probably installed a back door.

I promptly install a fire, and system became invisible-and safe –again. I called my ISP, and the conversation went something like this:" Look I just installed DSL, and my system is wide open."

Support person: " Well, yes, everyone know that you have to take some extra steps to protect yourself."

Me: " I know that, but I don’t think everyone does. You should mention it in your documentation."

Me: " OK, but the installer said there is a fire wall built into the router .How come that did not protect me?"

Support Person: " Well, That’s not turned on until some one asks for it."

Convention fire walls stop both out going and incoming traffic and typically require quiet a bit of configuration and quiet a few support calls, Which I guess the ISP didn’t want to face. To me, it means a lot of unprotected systems are out there.