If you are a Windows XP or Pro user please click here for protection against MS-Blast and its variants

Virus Background

The two most common ways to be infected with a virus are via Email and via "Port Scanning." Email viruses are the most common method of infection since most email born viruses spread by the users address book. The virus simply scans that address book of the infected machine and makes copies to every contact in the address book. This allows email viruses to very quickly spread..

The second method of infection is via Port Scanning. Every time a user connects to the internet, they get a IP address (Internet Protocol address). IP addresses are unique to the Provider with whom you are connecting. Each Provider gets IP addresses assigned from ARIN (www.arin.net) - The American Internet Addressing Registry in blocks. Infected machines scan large blocks of IP addresses to find other machines to infect. This was the case in the MS_Blaster Virus.

Because these 2 methods are the most common methods of infection, YouBetNet has implemented the following.

YouBetNet offers 2 Layers of Virus Protection:

1. We scan all incoming emails and attachments for viruses before they are downloaded by your email client software. Our email server's virus definition list is updated every hour, on the hour.

2. YouBetNet also offers downloadable Virus Software from Trend Micro called Officescan™. Officescan is like Norton and McAffee Protection except you don't have to pay for the updates every year. YouBetNet pays Trend Micro for the Updates for you. You can download Officescan here: http://204.96.100.46/officescan/clientinstall/default.htm (Please Note, this will take 45 Minutes to an hour to install and update)

These 2 layers of protection working in combination will stop most of the virus activity, but users are urged to update there system using the Windows Update Utility. The Windows Update Utility is a service provided by Microsoft to find and fix security problems inside the Windows Operating System. There are 3 levels to the Windows Update Utility: Critical, Recommended, and Driver.
Critical: Major Security Problem - All users should update these.
Recommended: Many of these updates would help your browsing or email experience. This also has quite a few multimedia updates for you.
Driver: These are driver updates for components inside your machine. Nice but not required.

If you think you are infected with a virus, please call us @ 1.866.968.2388

Trend Micro's Virus Encyclopedia can be found here

Page Last Updated on 06/28/2005 20:15:30 -0500