Bogus Virus Warning ...Written by Kimberly Teed
I've received several of these warnings from very well meaning e-friends/associates, so I figured it's important enough to pass this information on ... e-mail reads, "PLEASE PAY CLOSE ATTENTION!!! YOU MAY HAVE A DEADLY VIRUS ON YOUR COMPUTER ... ... SULFNBK.EXE -- ON JUNE 1, 2001 IT WILL OPEN AND DESTROY YOUR HARD DRIVE. NO ONE KNOWS WHERE IT CAME FROM AND THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO GET RID OF IT ... ..."This is a bogus virus warning ... don't delete Sulfnbk.exe! Sulfnbk.exe is a legitimate Win98 operating system file, so
| | This Privacy Stuff is Really Bugging Me!Written by Mike Banks Valentine
There is a nasty little privacy parasite loose on your computer. You get it by visiting web sites with "bugs" on them. Typically served by ad tracking, affiliate tracking and even email tracking companies to measure effectiveness of their ads, track their visitors and find out when you open their email. Web bugs are tiny, invisible 1 pixel by 1 pixel graphic files that notify a third party web site when a page, an ad or an email is viewed.Now if you've joined an affiliate program through any of major affiliate tracking companies, you have probably even put these bugs on your own pages without knowing what you've done. They come in HTML code you are given to paste into your page by Commission Junction or LinkShare or BeFree networks and LinkExchange to track your visitors so you can be paid your affiliate commissions. You'll see on link code something like this  This is actually WebSite101 code for our affiliate link to eHealthInsurance.com and is required by their affiliate program. This is a "good" use of web bugs to track commission payments to affiliates. It allows host to track exactly what web page was visited by surfer and when so that affiliate links can be tracked from their source. The "bad" bugs are those used by ad servers to track which advertisements are viewed by surfers and combine it with other information stored about that surfer at other web sites. There are bugs included in HTML email -- those messages that include graphics, fonts and page color in messages -- to see when email was opened and can even tell where on your hard drive that email is stored, when it was viewed, how long it was open and if links are clicked on.
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