* Conficker C & April 1st *

yorksrabbit

The 'net seems pretty stuffed with postings about this, albeit the more responsible posters have said they're not trying to be overly alarmist.

Unfortunately, I have a friend who seems not to have gotten over the end-of-the-world scenario re Y2K.

I've emailed back to say if her PC is fully up to date with Windows security patches then she should be OK.

'Should be', however, isn't cutting it.

There are several tried & trusted expert posters here and I'd appreciate their advice, viz:

is there anything else I should be telling my friend so as to calm her down a bit?

She really has got it into her head that this "thing" will activate on April 1st. . .

Help appreciated: thanks!

Browntoa

i would'nt worry if your Antivirus is up to date and you have done a recent scan

Browntoa

tell her to scan with this

http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm

yorksrabbit

Browntoa:

Sincere thanks for the instant help: much appreciated. I'll email her the link now.

Marty_J

OneCare?

It has truly awful detection rates. In one test, it missed almost 20% of the viruses. If I used a PC, I wouldn't be too keen on relying on it.

Still, if you want to use it, you'd better do it quick; it's so terrible Microsoft are discontinuing it in two months.

Tell your friend to use a decent anti-virus such as Avira AntiVir, to not use illegal filesharing, to stay away from dodgy websites, and not to open email attachments.

yorksrabbit

ooer. . .

She's using Avast antivirus on my recommendation -- the daily auto updates seem be more, um, up-to-date than Avira's (but I could be wrong!)

Marty_J

Avira updates every day too as far as I'm aware.

Avast is a good product though, so I wouldn't worry about it.

OneCare however, is not.

aliEnRIK

I must admit browntoa ~ im kinda shocked youve said to scan with onecare!

Martys suggestion of Avira is far better (In fact probably the best thing you can do for free)

What happening April 1st anyways? Nuclear war? aliEns start taking over the world? Atlantis rises from the depths?

Browntoa

was only suggesting it as the original posters problem was a disbelieving friend

the use of the words Windows and Microsoft was meant to calm them , bit like a placebo , this will not actually do anything but may make them feel better

jingle68

should i remove my AVG Free & install AVIRA ?

aliEnRIK

haha

Fair play.

At one point I was even wondering if you were playing an early april fools jape