You may not think that information on viruses has much place on a Diablo site, but there are many people that have been affected and infected. You and I play with these people everyday and its my desire to provide you with information about the types and causes of viruses that affect us, the Diablo player. There are virtually thousands upon thousands of virii on the internet and more are created everyday by unscrupulous programmers and "hackers". Most of these virii we will never see, hear about or have to worry about.

On July 19, 2000, I was infected with my very first virus. It was the WScript/Kak.worm. This virus was included in the HTML of a news group post sent to the alt.games.diablo newsgroup. Several other people were infected as well, but thankfully, I caught the infection before I restarted my computer. In other words, no damage was done. Events like this do make you realize how vulnerable you are to infections from doing nothing more than reading a news group posting.

Use the links below to research your present situation to determine how much at risk you are for infection. Once you have done this, determine what steps you need to take to protect yourself.

Do you download lots of programs from many sources on the net?

Do you have your security on your computer set too low?

Do you borrow software from your friends?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, you could be at a high risk for infection. If you use Microsoft products, you are signifigantly more vulnerable than those that use other operating systems. While this seems very bad, in reality, its simply logical since approximately 85% of the world uses Microsoft products. The odds simply favor them. There *are*, however, security issues with Outlook Express that should be addressed. Visit the following sites for more information.

Everything you could want to know about viruses

The FAQ from alt.comp.virus

The FAQ from The Institute of Information and Computing Sciences

Stalker