First off, go to Trendmicro’s Housecall, a free virus scan and let it install the ActiveX controls needed for you to scan your computer, then start the scan. I’ll wait here until you get back.

Go. I’m not continuing until you start that scan.

Oh, you want to know why? Because when you get infected with a virus these days you’re not hurting yourself, you’re hurting thousands and thousands of other people. Today’s viruses can be installed via unpatched Internet Explore Security Holes (and you do go to Windowsupdate.com and patch them, right?), opening email attachments (that you thought were from friends, or of Anna Kournakova being naked) or from the old-fashioned “running an infected file”. There are even some viruses that can just get onto your computer if it’s on the Internet, not behind a firewall, and not updated with the latest security patches.

And what most viruses these days do after they’ve been infected is spam themselves out to EVERYONE ELSE YOU KNOW. That includes me. I checked my email today and Symantec Antivirus deleted TWENTY virus attachments. Someone who knows me, or at least has my email in their temporary internet files folder somewhere, is infected and their computer is non-stop sending itself out through its own email program, over and over again.

And all it’d take is an antivirus program. Me, I like Symantec (aka “Norton”) Antivirus. It’s powerful, a fair price (I suppose) and constantly updated.

My guess is that the majority of you out there don’t have an antivirus program installed, or haven’t updated the one you have and haven’t done a scan in a long time. Oh sure, maybe *you* aren’t opening email attachments, but is everyone who uses your computer so smart?

A friend (coughJoeKeysercough) asked me today why he couldn’t send email. He gave me the error and it was because his outgoing mail port was blocked. After going through every possible cause I figured it had to be his ISP blocking it, and the main reason for that: They detected he was sending out TONS of email and was either a spammer or infected. So they blocked it. Good for them, I say. If not for that action he would have continue to send out that virus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to everyone in his address book and anyone whose email showed up on a web page he visited. Nobody would know it was him because viruses are smart and fake their “from” addresses.

So look, just go get scanned. If you come up clean, that’s great. You should still get an antivirus program installed, and should definitely make sure you get the latest Windows security patches.

And while you’re at it, stop installing spyware just to get at porn. Yeah, you know who you are.