, Norton’s is 
).Computer Services has received e-mail and phone messages over the past months regarding student access to their e-mail account. Students can access their account from a computer “across-the-hall” in someone else’s room, but not from their computer. Another common scenario is that they can access their Acornmail account from the PSC library, but not from their computer at home.
In almost all cases, access-problems to the Acornmail server are because of the computer you are using, or something that your Internet Service Provider is doing, not the Acornmail server itself.
Viruses, adware, and spyware can all be installed automatically on your computer without your knowledge just by visiting a web site or by reading an e-mail (or e-mail attachment). Viruses can also get loaded from other computers searching for computers that are turned on, which are not patched properly.
If you cannot access your Acornmail account from off-campus or from your computer in the dorms, but you can access it from the library (or computer personnel have verified that they can access your account from campus), please check your computer as listed below. If you continue to have problems, your computer may need professional help. Please note that the PSC computer services staff does not have time to debug individual computer hardware/software problems. There are several computer companies in the area that provide professional services for computer problems.
Up-to-date Microsoft Operating System
Make sure that you are running an up-to-date operating system. For those users running Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003, Microsoft releases security patches every month to fix security holes in their operating system. Microsoft has ceased providing all but emergency security patches for Windows 95/98/ME.
While some of the security holes are hard to exploit, several known holes exist in unpatched (or under-patched) systems allowing Internet users to take control of your computer (and delete files, or use your bandwidth for their needs).
Utilizing Microsoft Internet Explorer, go to Tools, and click Windows Updates. You may be prompted with a dialog box requesting permission to load software on your computer from Microsoft so that Microsoft’s update site can interact with your computer to determine which updates you have not loaded yet. All CRITICAL updates should be loaded. Please note that you will be required to reboot after most of the updating.
Up-to-date Virus Protection
Make sure that your virus protection is up-to-date and functioning. While many users think that they have protection, they really don’t.
While there are other virus-protection packages available (a couple for free), McAfee and Norton are the most commonly distributed, and that is why the discussion below is limited to them.
Most computers come with a 90-day “demo” version of McAfee or Norton Anti-Virus. This virus protection is not enabled until you click the icon in the start menu to do the initial setup/configuration of your virus protection. Until this is done, you are not protected from viruses.
After you have run the initial setup/configuration, the 90-day protection is enabled, and assuming that you went through the setup and configured the automatic update feature of the software, updates are automatically downloaded and applied to your computer, protecting you from the latest viruses that are out during the period. Both McAfee and Norton place an icon in the Window’s system-tray (McAfee’s is similar to , Norton’s is ).
If you have an icon in the tray, you can right-click the icon, and then click “About” to see how up-to-date your protection is. Both McAfee and Norton release updates weekly (usually on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning). They also release “emergency” updates as circumstances warrant. Your virus protection date should be no more than 7-14 days old. If your protection is a month-or-two old, you are not protected from the known viruses on the Internet.
The virus software also schedules a full scan of your computer (usually once-a-week) to determine if any viruses have gotten passed the “on-access” scanner that is running (indicated by the icon in the system tray).
Some viruses attempt to disable the on-access scanner, so if you have a red “x” or a red/black “/” or circle through your icon, your virus protection is more-than-likely not checking for viruses. This should be investigated, as you have a problem with either the virus software itself, or you have a virus on your computer. You should be able to reenable the virus scannerwith an option on the “right-click” menu. If that still doesn't remove the "x" or "/" from the virus icon, or the virus program terminates, you have something blocking the running of the virus scanner that should be investigated further and fixed. After fixing any problems, whether or not it is just updating your virus definitions, or re-enabling the virus software, a full system scan should be preformed to verify that you are virus-free.
If your computer is not current with it’s virus product, or the virus protection software isn’t running, your computer is vulnerable to all new viruses that come out that the virus software doesn’t detect.
Check for the Existence of Adware and/or Spyware
The prevalence of “adware” has increased significantly over the past three months. Adware, simplified, is software that starts running on your computer when it is booted. While you are using your computer, the adware software monitors ALL of your Internet traffic; cataloging which sites you are visiting (some even attempt to decipher the web-page content to see what you’re browsing for). Depending on which adware is running (sometimes it’s more than one), various pop-up advertisements appear on your computer while you’re browsing the Internet. When you click on one of the advertisements, the adware software company gets credit for a “site visit” to the advertiser’s site. Some examples of adware are: Gator, Gain, and New.Net. Some of these packages are automatically installed when you download and install other packages (RealOne Player for example, used to automatically install New.Net). The free version of the DivX movie codec/player also includes an adware package (Gain) that MUST be kept installed and running in order for the free version of the DivX codec to work. Attempts to disable Gain will result in the movie codec not functioning properly.
It’s possible to have more than one adware program running at the same time, and depending on the speed of your computer, your Internet access capability may slow down to a crawl, even if you have a high-speed connection to the Internet. Most adware programs don’t want to miss anything going on, they will cause Internet Explorer and the operating system not to request information as fast as it could, giving it time to decipher the information. With several different programs running, the results can bring a 2.0ghz computer downloading pages from the Internet slower than a dial-up connection, and/or cause pages not to load at all. Adware programs also consume your bandwidth to download the advertisements.
While most of the Spyware programs could easily fit into the “Adware” category of programs, some spyware programs raise a significantly bigger problem – that is; in addition to the functions and capabilities of the adware programs, spyware programs can monitor the keyboard strokes, store them until a predetermined date/time, and send them to whoever created the program. Alternatively, it may simply store them and allow someone on the Internet to retrieve them at their convenience from your computer. Put into its simplest terms, spyware can capture (and share with others) information usually kept confidential: usernames, passwords, credit card and other personal information that you may not want shared.
There are several web sites on the Internet that you can visit to check for the existence of adware/spyware. There are also several programs (some free, some not free) that will check for and remove adware. Use of software is at your own risk.
One useful website is: http://aumha.org/a/noads.htm. It checks for some of the most-common adware/spyware (the web site calls them “parasites”) programs on the Internet. While it does not detect as many as the software packages listed below, it is a good, quick, first-check for problems.
Peer-to-Peer File Sharing (KaZza, Morpheus, BearShare, Napster, Gnutella, etc….)
No discussion of computer performance or Internet bandwidth usage would be complete without mentioning file-sharing software. P2P (peer-to-peer [computer-to-computer without using a central server]) file-sharing software usage has more than doubled in the past 18 months. P2P software allows for users to “share” files without having to search multiple servers to find where the files are actually located. Several peer-to-peer file sharing programs have known security holes in them allowing users of the p2p network to gain full control of your computer. If you are going to use p2p software, keep up with the known security problems of the software that you are using and use it responsibly.
Computer Usage Note
If you leave your computer on 24/7, and you have a high-speed connection to the Internet (DSL, cable-modem, dorm network), your computer is connected to the Internet when it is on, regardless of whether or not you are sitting in front of it or not. This means that while you eat, sleep, attend classes, etc., your computer (if on) is connected to the Internet. While connected, it has the potential of being hacked into or attacked.
If you’re going to go to classes, and you won’t be back to your computer for a couple of hours, shut it down while you’re gone. This way noone can gain control of your computer while you are gone.