Back in March 1999 the Melissa virus was making the rounds as one of the first computer viruses that was transmitted by email. I recall the damage and devastation as people unknowingly opened Word attachments only to have the bug transferred to 50 people in their email address book. After this virus hit the saying on the Internet was ‘never open an email attachment’. It is interesting to see how far we have come in our fight against damaging computer critters, since the first computer virus was introduced some 25 years ago.

But the question is, have we done enough? I don’t believe so and here are a few reason why. We have not taken the time to educate to users on the dangers of the Internet and their responsibility to keep their systems protected. One would think that after computers having been in use for well over 25 years, that people would have a good handle on how to protect their computer systems. Yet according to some sources there are 1.5 million computers that have been taken over by hackers and are being used to exploit their wares. In some other recent surveys it is still claimed that over 1/2 of the worlds computers still don’t have an anti-virus program in use or that has been updated.

I recall when I was teaching computer classes I was always amazed how many people did not know they were supposed to update their anti-virus programs. Some who had owned computers for years had never completed an update. One particular brand of anti-virus software claimed it was in fact updated, yet I would find that the virus definitions were sometimes 6 months out of date. But there the user was surfing the Internet with no protections in place.

Which has always led me to believe that maybe we should require that all new Internet users take some type of a safety class, just to learn on how to keep their systems protected if they plan to surf the Internet.
What do you think? Would doing something like this help any?

Comments welcome.

[tags]melissa, viruses, protection, software, anti-virus, [/tags]