Tracy recounts his "main course" which caused him to forgo forever more the
personal address book within Outlook.  A good story but it doesn't explain
why he was unaffected when the company mail system went down.  One would
have thought if the mail system goes down, it will be down for everyone,
regardless of having a personal address book.

At any rate, since I use a laptop and am frequently on the road, the Global
address book is useless to me.  I do not use the PAB however, I use the
contacts in LookOut 2000.  I keep a lot of information in there, in personal
folders. It  is very convenient.  All I need worry about is to backup one
file, massive but just one file, and I thus back up most of my work
environment.

One more thing, I looked at how my client, LookOut 2000 handled this latest
virus.  The one I received directly from Robert showed up as an attachment,
but also showed up as part of the message in the Pane View.  Totally
harmless.  I simply purged the message.  I should draw your attention to the
Microsoft web site where patches and security fixes are available for
LookOut (all versions) and other products, which nullify this type of worm.
My client is up to date and I do not use or trust any anti-virus software.
I would rather patch the program and be careful of what I open, all
attachments are suspect.

These patches also exist for Outlook Express and should be installed
immediately if you use that product.


Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 288-7438
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com

-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
Johnson, Tracy
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 4:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Outlook - Personal Address Books, to Keep or Not to Keep, That
is the Question

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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