Don't Make Your Online Business Look Amateur

By Kim Eyer
Posted Thursday, August 26, 2004

I'm going to tell you a short story about an experience I had this week. If you run an Online Business, receive and send emails, and run downloads, then listen up!

The story...
I'm in my home office, have just logged onto my ISP and am going through some emails. I have one from a merchant who uses the same third party merchant program that I use. Imagine my utter shock when I click on this email to open it and ..WHAM!., my Norton Anti-Virus 2000 software locks down and halts my system. Oh yeah, I got the sound effects and the whole works! And was I loving it? (Or perhaps, "does a chicken have lips?", would be a better question.) I lucked out though, because my anti-virus quarantined the virus. Therefore, my system did not get infected.

What was it?
Scary.the Trojan horse "kak.hta" file, a nasty little Wscript.KakWorm. Oh it's a beauty, hides on your system until the 1st of any given month at 5:00 pm. Then it locks you out the next time you boot up. Know what that means? You can't open your windows system anymore! Sheesh, sure hope you didn't need it anyway!

So, here's my point..You should have Anti-virus software and keep it updated. Don't embarass yourself like the Online Business I mentioned above. No business can afford to make such an impression to potential customers or business partners. Want to guess how fast they'll warn everybody else they know? Not only did I experience the story above, but no doubt the same merchant sent emails to many other parties in the same affiliate/merchant house. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! What a shame when a simple anti-virus software could have saved their day!

The particular virus referred to in this article attacks through Outlook Express. But, no matter what email or other applications you use, Anti-Virus Software is worth the small expense and your time to protect your business.

You can get a patch for your Outlook Express and IE Browser, which closes the "hole" and keeps your system safe from this virus (and its cousins.) Go here, it's FREE: (http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/IE/tools/scrpteye.asp)

You can read up on the Wscript.KakWorm here: (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/2000020318071406&src=hot)

(Those are just plain links, I'm not trying a make a dime by driving traffic anywhere!)

And finally for the end of the story . I sent an email to the merchant who accidentally forwarded me this virus, informing them they had the virus. And now, we have the final sna-foo and mistake of all time.....the same merchant ignores my email, and sends me another saying "they don't understand" without even going to check the website information I provided to try to help them! (I got an improper Active-X control system warning for that email.) I had to look up their phone number, and call them long distance at my own expense. Sheesh....Cut me a break!...Learn to do
business BEFORE you do business.

About the Author
Kim Eyer is webmaster of (http://www.eInTown.com), and runs a web development business at (http://www.eyerstation.com). Subscribe to the eInTownObserver at mailto:info@eintown.com and get product updates, reviews, and merchant discounts every 2 weeks. A FREE eBook for new Internet Users is given to all who join.