Our thanks to Gene Barlow and his wife, who told us about several interesting products that help us do necessary and incredibly important routines for safe computing. Things like 1) backing up your entire hard drive, 2) adding security features to your computer to combat some of the new dangers we all face, or 3) cleaning an old hard drive of data before disposing of it.

• The first looks like this:
• "Dear Sir/Madam,
• "We have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.
• "Important:
• "Please answer our questions!
• "The list of questions are attached.
• "Yours faithfully,
• "Steven Allison
• "Central Intelligence Agency -CIA-
• "Office of Public Affairs
• "Washington, D.C. 20505
• "phone: (703) 482-0623
• "7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., US Eastern time”

The e-mail appears to be sent from "mail@FBI.gov," "admin@FBI.gov," "department@FBI.gov" although there may be other similar addresses involved. The recipient is enticed to open the .zip attachment, which actually contains a W32/SOBER.JEN@MM worm. The one I received appeared to have been sent from the CIA. The second message appears to be sent from "support@cipcup.org" and has a readme.zip attachment.

It says:
"Dear Cipcug Member,
"We have temporarily suspended your email account [followed by your cipcug e-mail address]

"This might be due to either of the following reasons;
"1. A recent change in your personal information (i.e. change of address).
"2. Submiting invalid information during the initial sign in process. "3. An inability to accurately verify your selected option of subscription due to an internal error within our processors.
"See the details to reactivate you Cipcug account.
"Sincerely, The Cipcug Support Team
"Attachment: No Virus (Clean)
"Cipcug Antivirus - www.cipcug.org”

Needless to say this message was NOT, repeat NOT, sent by anyone at cipcug.org and the attachment should NOT BE OPENED.

E-Bay, PayPal, your banks, your securities brokers, the police, the courts, your user group, the FBI, or CIA etc. don’t send out such messages. If you receive such a message, delete it. Never open the attachment. Never open an attachment from anyone, not even a friend, unless you are sure you know what it is and that the friend really sent it.