You know, there's never a dull moment.
Last month, we were fending off cyber squatters. You'll recall that these are people who sit around and wait for people to let their domain name registrations lapse. Then, they swoop in and acquire the domain name and potentially turn it into something else. When that something else is directly in conflict with education and our educational aims, then we have a problem.
It's never a good time to drop your vigil over these things but the number of reports of cyber squatting has gone down recently.
You'd think that it would be a good time to sit back and relax. No sir.
It started with an email that I received from the COCA group of educators. COCA is the Central Ontario Computer Association and it's an organization of computer consultants largely from the Toronto area. The message indicated that there was someone who knew that I had access to a colour printer and contained a request for me to print some pictures from a party. Looking at the attachment, it looked as though they were kind enough to post the pictures to a website to make it easy for me.
Now, I can be as accommodating as anyone, but that's a really strange request to come from someone that I don't even know! When I checked the history of the message, I see that not only did it go to me, but to everyone on the entire mailing list.
This isn't good.
Checking my favourite source for virus information reveals that there indeed was a virus called "Myparty" that was spreading rampantly. Over the next day or so, all kinds of messages were pouring in asking for the use of my printer. Then, at the CIESC meeting, I find out that others are getting the same requests!
Bottom line?
You've got to keep your virus checker up to date. The Ministry of Education has licensed copies of Command Antivirus and it should be protecting you from these nasties. When a new one comes along, you don't have to upgrade the software, just the definition files that tells the software how to identify the new viruses.
It's sound advice and an action that everyone should take regularly.
Just as anyone who drives a car needs to stay on top of the latest rules of the road, anyone who drives a computer in the Internet age needs to do all that can be done to stay protected.
