[at-l] Important

[the_rev_mrf at kingcon.com (Martin Fors)]

Hi from marty aka rusty,

It is very important as a user of the Internet in general that you read this
email as it was passed along to me by my own ISP:

A most recent nasty trick for virus creators is that there have been a
number of viruses being sent through email that are contained in password
protected ZIP files.

First an explanation of a ZIP file, just in case you don't know: A ZIP file
is a file that contains other files, sort of like a bucket of files. The
files inside a ZIP file are compressed in order to make the size of the
files smaller. You can password protect a ZIP file. This means you cannot
open a zip file unless you provide the password.

Now the bad news. Virus scanners (all virus scanners that I know of) cannot
detect viruses that are stored in a password protected zip file, because
they need to know the password to see what is inside. So you need to be
watchful for email sent to you that contain password protected ZIP files.
These emails can be very deceiving, they might for instance try to convince
you that your ISP wants you to open a file or else your email will be
disabled.

*******DO NOT OPEN THAT FILE********, immediately forward the email to your
ISP minus the attachment so that they can make efforts to block it.

*************THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT*************

To repeat, ISP's WILL NOT send you password protected files. They do not do
that, they have no need to do that. If you get an email that claims to be
from your ISP and asks you to open a file with a password, DO NOT DO SO!
Immediately forward the email to your ISP minus the attachment so that they
can make efforts to block it.

It is important to understand that bad people are trying to trick you all
the time. They write programs that can easily make you think you are doing
something legitimate, when in fact it is a trick designed to make you give
or do what they want. By paying attention to security on your computer, and
following the warning above, you prevent your computer from being used as a
device with which to attack other computers, and also help your ISP to
prevent other machines from being attacked.

I felt it was important to pass this along. marty