Internet Worm To Take Off April 1st

The fast-moving Conficker computer worm, that has infected at least 3 million PCs, is set to spring to life in a new way on April Fools' Day. That's when many of the infected machines will get more aggressive about "phoning home" to the worm's creators over the Internet. When that happens, the hackers behind the worm will be able to trigger the program to send spam, spread more infections, clog networks with traffic, or try and bring down Web sites. This could cause havoc, from massive network outages to the creation of a cyberweapon of mass destruction that attacks government computers. But researchers who have been tracking Conficker say the date will probably come and go quietly. As a computer tech I know how bad these things can be to somebody's computer without protection. Make sure you have some sort of antivirus software running on your computer and keep it up to date. A great free program is AVG Antivirus. You can download the free version of it here

Conficker Worm

Thanks for the information and the free download site. I personally am very careful about keeping my software up to date. I have had many friends that send a lot of forwarded messages and send viruses along with the messages. I hope that this worm really does not cause too many problems. When the year 2000 rolled around there was a considerable amount of concern about whether there would be system problems, but the companies I worked for at the time were very proactive about getting the gliches worked out ahead of time.

What I don’t understand is why people even want to send spam. I don’t get what goal it accomplishes to the person who first starts viruses or spam that just annoy people. Are they just really bored and just because they can send random spam emails to people, they do it? I guess this didn’t really make too big of a deal since it is the day after April rools day and I haven’t noticed or heard about this. Plus my computer is fine, so I guess the worm didn’t get me. I guess I just don’t understand the reasoning behind why someone would start something like this.

With how much people use computers these days, the Conficker virus is a huge threat. I've heard people say that it isn't real and it's all gossip but better safe than sorry right? A guy that I work with is actually a computer tech of our plant and he gave all of us here at work information to try and stay safe against it. He said to make sure that you have the Security Update KB 958644. Make sure to stay up to date with anti virus software...it's better to make an attempt at keeping the virus away than to just let it get ya!

what i dont understand is how the word of this supposed new virus spreads? I mean who starts it, and why would someone have a set date to when there going to start killing everybodys computers. That's horrible anyway. The whole computer virus sitatuions are rediculous, it's so annoying to have to buy so much anti-virus software when half the time it doesnt even prevent anything. Thanks for the address to the software you recommended, .. hopefully not too many people were affected by this april fools virus!

At first I thought that this was just a big hoax for April fools. I have not had any problems with my computer and am thankful for that. I hope that they find out who is behind this thing though. The internet is a very useful resource. I feel that those who try and destroy that resource should be punished. In addition crashing multiple computers should carry large punishments. If you think about it, if one million computers and web sites crashed, that could cause irreversible damage not only to personal property but the economy too. Many of these web sites generate a great deal of our GDP and our jobs, which at this moment in time we need.