See an unfamiliar term? Check the newsletter glossary.
newsletter://mv.com
March 2001
WORMS, BUGS and other creepy crawly things that sneak into your computer
It seems as though every week the media reports a new problem with
email. If we were to believe the hype we would think that this is some-
thing new and rather uncommon. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all.
Many attacks arrive in email, appearing as though they are from friends,
co-workers and business associates. Some come when you download an appli-
cation from the Internet, or with things that you receive via instant mes-
sage programs or other chat software.
Virus emails may arrive with intriguing subjects meant to trick you
into opening them and the attachments. Some of the recent entries found at
mcafee.com:
Name Date found Subject of email
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Snow White 11/1/2000 Snowhite and the Seven Dwarfs-The REAL story
Anna Kournikova 2/12/2001 Here you have, ;o) Hi Check This!
BabyPic 2/27/2001 My baby pic!
If you received a message with any of the above subjects, and opened
the attachments, you may have been infected.
Attacks are generally broken down into a different types, a few of the
more common ones being: VIRUS, TROJAN and WORM.
VIRUS: A malicious program that attaches itself to your computer files.
When you run the application that the virus is attached to, the virus
becomes active. The virus may try to damage system files or may simply be
mischievous, but will often try to attach itself to other files in your
computer. Thus even system backups can be affected.
TROJAN: A Trojan Horse, while not a virus, is still an attack on a com-
puter. Like the Trojan Horse of mythology, this is an attack that's given
to you hidden in something that looks like a gift. A Trojan usually
doesn't replicate itself, it will usually look like another program, and
may even use the icon for a common application. You may think that you are
starting up an amusing program or a useful application, but while the pro-
gram is running it's also doing something to your system in the background.
WORM: A worm is similar to a virus in that when it is active it will repli-
cate itself, but it does not attach itself to files. Instead it may try to
work through a network (such as the Internet) and attack/infect other com-
puters, such as by sending itself through email to people in your address-
book.
All of these things depend on you or your computer executing a program
that you shouldn't. You should learn to be wary of executing programs that
you don't absolutely know are safe, and develop a healthy paranoia about
applications you receive from friends or strangers or from the Internet.
You should also configure your commonly used programs (such as your email
program) so that attachments are never executed automatically. For exam-
ple, a recently deployed attack works by convincing you to click on some-
thing in the "vcard" attachment of an email message that you might read
using Outlook Express.
MV Customer Service has put together an information page on computer
attacks and how to help protect yourself. Visit http://home.mv.net/ and
check out the Technical Support section.
It happens every spring
Springtime is nearly here again, bringing a seasonal shift in the
weather. And just like they do in the fall, the changes in temperature and
other conditions can have an affect on telephone lines. Thawing and freez-
ing can induce cracking in the cables, can reveal moistened wires or dam-
aged cables, and can bring a number of other line problems. If you notice
an increase in problems when you are dialing into MV, remember this sea-
sonal warning. Place a voice call on the line you use for your modem
calls, and listen for noises in the background -- noises such as hums,
clicks, crackles, or other conversations leaking through from other tele-
phone wires. Any of these things will play mischief with your modem con-
nections, and because they also impact the voice quality of your telephone
line, they are things that you can get your telephone company to investi-
gate when you notice them.
Billing revisited
We mentioned in our last newsletter that we were making some changes
in billing, and that we hoped to begin some of these changes by mid-Febru-
ary. As you can probably tell, we didn't quite make that goal. We're now
planning on doing another billing at the begininng of April to begin some
of billing changes that we've been talking about for 6 months or so.
The first change we will be making is to move away from our current
policy of billing in arrears, where we send a bill for the previous two
months usage. We'll be gradually moving to a subscriber style payment, in
which we must receive base payment for service in order to provide that
service to you. Most other ISPs use that kind of a subscriber style
billing -- and with good reason: our expenses are charged to us before we
use them, and it simply doesn't make sense to collect our fees months after
providing service when we're funding the operation of our business in
advance.
There are other small and large billing changes we are working on,
with the goal of making the process more efficient for us so that we can
continue to provide a high level of service. These changes will be
detailed on the "news" section of our web page in the coming weeks.
One thing you can expect is a change to email or online billing by
default. Because postal (paper) billing represents significant overhead to
us, both in workload and in real money spent, we expect to add a modest
charge for sending out paper bills. That charge can be avoided, of course,
by allowing us to bill you via email or other electronic invoicing.
New bandwidth plans
As of this writing we are near to signing new contracts for signifi-
cant additions to our Internet bandwidth. The timing is such that we can't
provide details here, but along with the billing changes, that's something
else that you should be watching for in the "news" section of our web page.
Short notes
* We continue our progress in bringing our co-location area online; we
were plagued with backorders for datacenter fixtures from a supplier
who, it turned out, was going out of business. But we'll be working
around that and should be ready for operations this month. Please
visit http://colo.mv.net/ for more information about this new service.
* Our DSL offerings have been up and running for about six months now,
and we have gained a lot of experience with the provisioning and
ordering process, and with the product and service in general. We
expect to be broadening our DSL/C coverage to include some areas in
Mass during the second quarter of 2001. For information about MV's
DSL service, please visit http://dsl.mv.net/ or our home page at
http://www.mv.com/.
* As we've mentioned in the past, our Customer Service department has
created a web area to help provide you with specific information about
your use of MV services. Check out http://home.mv.net/ for this
resource. As always, our home page at http://www.mv.com/ also pro-
vides general information.
MV Communications PO Box 4963, Manchester, NH 03108 (603) 629-0000