Actually my 'Piece de Resistance' came about a couple years ago,
when several users in my company were hit with the then 'new'
virus that targeted address books.

By some strange quirk of coincidence, I had inadvertently 
purged my address book the day before!  When my company's
e-mail system ground to a halt, I was not affected.

That's when I became a convert to not using Outlook's Personal 
Address Books.

Not that I don't believe that good protection schemes are not 
effective, it is the personnel that are tasked with maintaining
those protection schemes in my company's e-mail system that are 
sometimes not effective.

If that is saying I don't trust them? ... Yep.

In the case of Ron, would he have been protected by some scheme
of protection set up by his e-mail administrator?  Maybe.  If
he had no Personal Address Book?  It would have nipped it in
the bud after he'd been attacked.

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 4:31 PM
To: Johnson, Tracy; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: Outlook - Personal Address Books, to Keep or Not to Keep,
That is the Question


X-no-Archive:yes
Tracy Johnson wrote in part:
> When a virus comes along that starts using addresses found in my 
> folders instead of an address book

Not to be flippant, but I have yet to have a virus that came along and used
addresses in my address book, contact list, or anything else. I have yet to
have any system I use infected by a virus. And I find keeping current more
effective than avoiding keeping current for fear of the unknown. I do not
mean to say that Tracy is afraid of the unknown, keeping current, or any
such thing. I will go so far as to say I have yet to see Tracy afraid of
anything, and as far as I know, Tracy is fearless. But I do want to dispel
the idea that one can stay safe by avoiding features which in themselves are
quite safe. 

Now that I think about it, one very effective form of spam filtering is to
set one's client to file away any email from anyone who is not already in
one's address book. And to make this easier, also configure your client to
automatically add to your address book anyone you reply to. New and
legitimate senders get filed away for later review, but this need happen
only once per new sender. 

Greg Stigers 
http://www.cgiusa.com

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