Re: OT: computer question

"Jungle Jim" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> SCR files do carry worms, etc.  I have a neighbor who has been hit so
> many times by a scr file, it's not funny.  After repairing his system
> for the nth time, I told him to get some protection because thsi was
> the last time I was going to clean up all he scr files that were not
> screen savers.

You are SO VERY RIGHT!
Any kind of executable on a Windows machine (and a few non-executables as
well) has been a target for virii (viruses?).
I always have my system set up to show all file extensions, thus revealing
the MyPornographicPicture.jpg as actually being e.g.
MyPornographicPicture.jpg.scr or some such executable file extenstion.
The problem with the Shell Scrap files are that M$ went one step further in
hiding the file extension. You have to go into the registry to get rid of
the hiding in this case.
Normally I read all NG messages and email as plain text. I might miss out on
some fancy graphics, but in this manner, I don't have any software executing
erroneously behind my back, as well as I don't signal a good email address
via web beacons (small graphics with a cute name that reveals your identity
when they get loaded by showing some HTML-formattet email), and I can take a
leasurely look at attachments and decide whether or not I deem them
dangerous or not.

The only time I have had malware (ad-ware, backdoors or virii) on my PC were
when two girls were playing around with my PC one afternoon... I hadn't
coached them enough on how to treat "do you want to install and run..."
messages.

/Keld Laursen