File-sharing realities for families

There's no question about it: file-sharing comes with risks. Beyond the lawsuits (the RIAA this week announced its latest round of nearly 500, bringing the total to about 3,000 sued among the 100 million+ file-swappers worldwide, Reuters reports)...



Here are the risks the average family is more likely to encounter:

Porn. The P2P services allow for sharing photos and videos, as well as music and text docs. Some of those images are pornography, including illegal child pornography. A study done in the US a year ago found that porn is being widely shared on these networks - even more than music on one called Gnutella (see Slyck's Guide to Gnutella), and kids can download porn by mistake because it's often not labeled as such.

Viruses. Unless properly protected with a firewall, anti-virus measures, and the latest security patches, file-sharers' PCs are vulnerable to the worms and viruses on other machines on the P2P networks.

Privacy. There are two very common risks in this category: 1) People are making a lot more than music available on their home PCs. The P2P services don't do a good job of telling users that they have to be careful about what folders on their hard drive they open up to the file-sharing public. Emails, medical records, and family financial information have inadvertently been shared on P2P networks, so - if used - the software needs to be configured carefully. The P2P services are also known to have a lot of spyware on them.



A family discussion about file-sharing could touch on: these risks, what P2P software people are using (here's one list of 54 titles), a kid's demo of how the software was configured, and what rules everybody should agree on. For more on family file-sharing (including the latest news and resources), see this week's issue of SafeKids/NetFamilyNews), and for one dad's views on kids' file-sharing, see "A tech-literate dad on file-sharing."

Google, Jeeves, Yahoo: How are they doing?

Even though most people use Google these days, its search results aren't much different from what you get at other search engines, a study found. The study, conducted by San Mateo, Calif.-based market research firm Vividence, surveyed and monitored 2,000 people as they used Google, Ask Jeeves, Lycos, Microsoft's MSN, and Yahoo, CNET reports. It found, for example, that in a search for the leading cause of death for people between 25 and 34, Google users found what they were looking for 55% of the time and people using its competitors reported success rates of between 52% and 54%. "The company found that Google clearly remains consumers' favorite, largely because of the search engine's less-cluttered interface. In fact, Vividence said almost 90% of Google users reported having a 'strongly positive experience'." Those figures were 68% at Yahoo, 50% at Ask Jeeves, 48% for Lycos, and 41% for MSN. And why do we need to know this? Well, Wellesley College found in a study last year that fewer than 2% of students surveyed used non-Internet sources in research they were asked to do. The study "also revealed the extraordinary confidence students have in search engines," its authors, two Wellesley professors said. For more on this, see "Critical thinking: Kids' best research (and online-safety) tool" in my 5/30/03 issue.

It's elementary, my dear parents

Kindergarteners and first-graders are now using technology to design things the way graphic designers, businesspeople, and scientists do,

USA TODAY reports in an article about small technophiles in Arizona. In one class in Tempe, first-graders "learn terms used in geometry by first shooting everyday shapes in the classroom and playground with digital cameras, then loading the pictures in PowerPoint presentations. It's vocabulary without boring flash cards." In Phoenix and Glendale, first-graders are designing PowerPoint presentations and digital greeting cards. As one school administrator put it, "in the land of technology, students are the natives and adults are the immigrants." But we parents knew that! ;-)

Mac patch flawed

I mentioned earlier this week that Apple had issued an unusual patch to fix Mac security problems that have come up recently. Well, CNET cites security experts at several different companies as saying it "failed to fix the underlying problem." And that security problem allows a hacker to upload and run a malicious program on a Mac - if the owner can be "enticed to go to a fake Web page on which the program has been placed." Tell the kids not to click on links in emails from people they don't know!

Porn spam still not labeled

Parents are probably among the most aware of this: The law hasn't made it one bit harder for kids to stumble on porn spam, CNET reports. The people who send out those millions of pornographic emails apparently are ignoring a new FTC rule requiring porn emails to be labeled as such (under the US's CAN-SPAM Act of December '03). "Not only did illegal sexually-explicit spam fail to slow down after the regulations took effect May 19, but pornographic email measured by one antispam company jumped from around 2 million messages in a 40-hour period last week to around 2.5 million during the same period this week." Meanwhile, the BBC reports that spam of all sorts now accounts for about 70% of email worldwide. The good news in this report is that financial spam is up and porn down in terms of subject matter. "Junk mail offering stock price tips, cheap loans and mortgages accounts for nearly 38% of all spam, while pornography accounts for just 5%." Viagra-type drugs, miracle diets, hair restorers, and other "health-related" subjects make up 40% of all junk email.



As for remedies, here's a dense piece for the very interested at CNET about progress in technical efforts to beat spam and spam scams. And the FBI is cracking down. It recently told Congress that it has identified more than 100 "significant spammers" and is targeting the worst 50 for "potential prosecution later this year," CNET also reports.

'Drugs' in online games

Besides the more typical threats of getting eaten by monsters or murdered by fellow avatars, a new one is turning up in multiplayer games on the Web, Wired News reports: "addictive drugs that can incapacitate or kill their characters." For example, the creators of Achaea, "one of the biggest online text-based games," have introduced the highly addictive "gleam" into its story about a crime ring trying to infiltrate the game's cities. "Characters who take gleam get hooked quickly - suffering typical addiction symptoms: violent vomiting, shivering, irrational sobbing, begging for the drug and even overdoses resulting in death," according to Wired News, which adds that "some of the game's players are angry about gleam's introduction into their world." This answers a question many parents would ask - how the drugs' effects are portrayed in these games? "Realistically" is probably a good answer. If young players see painful reactions and tragic results, this plot twist might be persuasive in a positive way. But email me your views - or post them just below where it says "comments."

Unusual security patch from Apple

Updates, or security patches, have been key to family PC security for a long time, but not for Mac owners. Until now. This patch for Macs is worth getting, Apple fans - the company recommends it. "The update fixes a pair of flaws that could be used to create a virus that spreads through a Web link sent via e-mail messages," CNET reports, adding the view of a computer security company that the patch is "extremely critical" because of all the hacker instructions for exploiting the flaws that have appeared in online discussions.

Teenagers tell it best

"Sandra," a 16-year-old in the UK, tells her own story at CBBC (BBC for kids) of how she and a friend almost met at McDonald's with a "19-year-old" man they'd gotten to know in a chatrrom. Because it was just a lark, and the two girls were together, they felt bold and agreed to meet with the man the minute he suggested it - after an hour a day of chatting over several days. It turned out there were two men waiting at McDonald's, both looking more like 40-somethings than teenagers, but the girls were smart and... I'll let Sandra tell the rest here. An American girl's experience that didn't have as happy an ending is "Amy's Story," told in audio rather than written form, in the Teens section of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's NetSmartz site. These stories beg some questions that the WebSafeCrackerz.com (for young teens) answers - e.g., how you see people online and how they see you, how to set boundaries, how people manipulate others in chat or instant-messaging, etc. (see "World Wide Weirdos" and the ASL Files in the BlahBlahBlah.com section of the site). For parents, there's some level-headed advice on instant-messaging from a father of six in the 1/9 issue of my newsletter.

WebSafeCrackerz.com: New site for teens

"We [teens] are a hard age group to please completely," said Rishi, "as our tastes vary so much, but I think in WebSafeCrackerz there's something for everybody.



"High praise from a 13-year-old, I'd say. He's a Briton, and this was his answer to my question about what he thought of this new online-safety site for 13-to-16-year-olds out of the UK. George, 15, thought the site is best for slightly younger teenagers, but liked two things about it anyway: WebSafeCrackerz is "confidential, so people using it don't feel embarrassed and ... can speak out" and it's got some good, straightforward information that "illustrates that it could happen to you if you aren't careful." Click here (to my newsletter) for more on WebSafeCrackerz, including Rishi and George's views on whether other teenagers would visit this site, which covers just about everything a teen could care about online: file-sharing, IM-ing, online harassment, spam, spyware, scams, etc.

Barring kid access to porn on phones

This is a sign of things to come in the US, as more and more children use cell phones. The Australian government is tightening regs so that porn won't reach children using mobile phones, Australian IT reports. The FCC's counterpart in Australia, the Australian Communication Authority, will now regulate access to content on the new 3G (3rd-generation) phones with high-speed Net access (to all of it - text, images, sound, video). "The new access controls will cover text messages deemed to be 'of an adult nature' on new phones ... and other audiovisual content with MA or R ratings. Content classified X or which is refused classification will be banned from the premium mobile phone services."

Easier PC recycling to come?

Dell and Hewlett-Packard say they want to take more of the financial burden for recycling computers off the shoulders of consumers and local governments, the New York Times reports. The companies' messages were "timed to the release Wednesday of an annual 'report card' of corporate environmental behavior by the Computer Takeback Campaign, a project of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an environmental research group based in San Jose, Calif." Dell got poor grades in last year's report, while HP received the Campaign's highest rating.

Parents unconcerned...

A full third of US parents "are not concerned about their children's safety when using the Internet," according to a recent survey done for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Twenty percent of parents "do not know any of the Internet codes or passwords, IM handles or email addresses for their children using the Internet," according to the NCMEC's press release. And 5% or less of parents surveyed are familiar with the most commonly used acronyms used by children on the Internet, like "POS" ("parent over shoulder"), often used before a computer screen is quickly minimized before its contents can be seen by Mom or Dad.

Girl's photos published on the Web

A Canadian man who, with a camera phone, took nude pictures of his 17-year-old girlfriend and published them on the Web was convicted and imprisoned for distributing child pornography, Reuters reported this week. He was sentenced to six months and "will be banned from using a cellphone or computer for two years after he is released." Because of the nature of the Web, the tragedy is that the girl's photos can be copied and circulated around the world indefinitely, all copies of which would be difficult if not impossible to find, much less removed from the Web or all the computer hard drives connected to it. Here's a link to one educator's view on how parents and educators need to help kids think through implications like these.

What worries young file-sharers

Whether they're downloading games, music, or software, kids 8-18 are concerned most about viruses (60%), then lawsuits (50%), spyware (43%), and whether or not downloading copyrighted material is wrong (29%). This is according to a just-released Harris Interactive survey sponsored by the Business Software Alliance, which has a particular concern about copyright theft. Eighty percent of US 8-to-18-year-olds "understand the definition of copyright, and yet more than half download music, 32% download games, and 22% download commercial software illegally," the BSA's press release says, adding: "As youth grow up, their knowledge about copyright increases, but their illegal downloading habits do, too." Home is where the downloading is: 55% of tweens and teens download free music, software, movies, and games on a family computer, 52% on their own PC, 34% at a friend's house, and 13% and 8% at a public library or somewhere else, respectively. More TV ads about piracy may be in the works, because the BSA found that kids learn "respect for copyrighted works" first from TV (59%), then parents (44%), the Internet (44%), friends (30%), and finally at school (18%). And their downloading prefs? Not surprisingly, music first (53%), then games (32%), software (22%), and movies (17%).

Kids 'n' camera phones: Scan for more info

Picture this: There's a bar code on a child's backpack or school uniform. A camera phone scans the bar code (like taking a picture), and up on the phone's screen pops the child's Web page with real-time information about him or her. As any parent can visualize, there's a definite darkside to this scenario, described in a Wired News article about this new bar code technology, called "Semacode" (here's their Web site). "This week, the art group etoy will issue Semacoded uniforms to 500 children participating in its "etoy.Day-Care-2 project" at the Nieuwe Domeinen arts and architecture festival in Amsterdam," Wired News reports. It's technology that will probably catch on ("businesspeople could put Semacodes on their business cards to link to constantly updated contact information"; "museums could tag exhibits with Semacodes to provide information in multiple languages"), so - if your kid's school someday thinks this is a cool idea - be ready with another perspective. Just for the purposes of discussion: This neat technology could also get into the wrong hands.

File-sharing at school

Parents might want to tell music fans heading off to school this fall that universities don't necessarily protect them from anti-piracy lawsuits. "A federal judge has ordered Michigan State University to produce the identities of nine people accused of using the campus computer system to illegally make music available to others via the Internet," the Detroit Free Press reports, and MSU has made no objection to the request. The RIAA (recording industry trade association) has particularly targeted file-sharing at universities in recent legal action. The latest round of RIAA lawsuits targeted 477 file-sharers at 14 universities across the US (see this issue of my newsletter for details.) The way it works is, the RIAA identifies the IP addresses of the computers used by very active file-sharers (those who not only download music via P2P services like Kazaa.com, but also make hundreds or thousands of songs on their hard drives available to others) and deliver those IP addresses to a judge with the request that the judge order an Internet service provider or university to reveal the names of the people who own those computers.

Child porn on file-sharing networks

In another reminder that kids wanting to swap tunes can encounter other types of files on file-sharing networks, CNN reported that "dozens of people" (of all ages) were arrested this week for trafficking in child porn on P2P services. "One 19-year-old youth recently arrested and convicted told authorities he started using peer-to-peer applications to share music, but later moved on to sending and receiving images and movies of child pornography." That's a federal crime on which the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are cracking down, having formed interagency task forces at federal, state, and local levels for this very active law-enforcement effort.

Kids accessing Web porn with image searches

"I was equally surprised and shocked that without paying a dime my child could access porn that is way, way beyond Playboy," writes Michelle, a subscriber of our newsletter, "including under-age, incest, animal images, among other things. It is disturbing for me, but how does a child process this stuff? Do they understand the extremes and how do they reconcile these images with real life relationships requiring respect and love?....



"I'd like to caution other parents that my discovery and reprimanding did not end the situation. It took tenacity and a lot of further talks to get through to my (straight-A, conscientious) son. Just as he learned how to access these sites from his friends, he also learned ways to get around the filters. I soon realized I could not keep up with my extremely tech-literate child." Click here to find out how this wise mom dealt with this parenting challenge.



Another mother's email started this string, sparking an article in my 4/30 issue about kids using search engines. Post or send in your own experience or comments. Fellow parents' stories can be very helpful!

Cell phone parental controls

They're not available yet, but are they something your family could use? Here's what we're talking about:

• Limit the amount of time kids talk on the phone
  
  
• Designate the times when the phone can be used (e.g.,
  
  not after 9pm - that's homework time)
  
  
• Allow communication only with certain phone numbers
  
  (e.g., Mom, Dad, sibs, your 10 best friends, your grandparents, and emergency
  
  numbers)
  
  
• Block certain numbers
  
  
• "View history" - check what calls a child has made.
  
  

The technology exists but hasn't yet been picked up by US cell phone companies like Verizon, Nokia, or AT&T. Read one mom's thinking on cell phones for kids and what would simplify the decision in this issue of my newsletter. Getting Lynn's thinking definitely helped clarify my thinking on the subject.

Kids accessing Web porn with image search

"I was equally surprised and shocked that without paying a dime my child could access porn that is way, way beyond Playboy," writes Michelle, a subscriber of our newsletter, "including under-age, incest, animal images, among other things. It is disturbing for me, but how does a child process this stuff? Do they understand the extremes and how do they reconcile these images with real life relationships requiring respect and love?....



"I'd like to caution other parents that my discovery and reprimanding did not end the situation. It took tenacity and a lot of further talks to get through to my (straight-A, conscientious) son. Just as he learned how to access these sites from his friends, he also learned ways to get around the filters. I soon realized I could not keep up with my extremely tech-literate child." Click here to find out how this wise mom dealt with this parenting challenge.



Another mother's email started this string, sparking an article in my 4/30 issue about kids using search engines. Post or send in your own experience or comments. Fellow parents' stories can be very helpful!

22 million teen Net users

...in the US by 2008 is the latest figure from Jupiter Research, up from 18 million right now. Jupiter got its figures from working with a core group of "teen influencers" who represent 17% of online teens in the US and who spend about eight hours a week online, CNET reports. "During the estimated seven hours a week they spend online, most teenagers regularly use instant messaging and browse online content like personal pages and blogs."

Symantec firewall flaw: Help

If you have this company's firewall on your family PC, read this article in The Register, which tells you how to get the flaws patched. At the bottom is a link to Symantec's update pageRed alert over Symantec firewall flaw.

Embedded ads in kids' games

You've certainly seen how it's done in movies - the latest-model BMW in a James Bond film, a certain brand of cigarettes on the table as a lovely actress lights up. Well, advertising watchdogs are now concerned about this: "Advertisers have discovered that videogames are a cool way to get their products in front of impressionable kids," as Reuters reports. The example the article gives is ex-cop Nick Kang, "cool Charles Bronson-type antihero" and pitchman for Puma sportswear in the videogame world of "True Crime: Streets of LA," from Activision. This might be a good subject for family discussion on what kids are noticing in the games they play.

Gamers not just kids

The majority of video game players are over 18, Reuters reports, citing an Entertainment Software Association survey. "In fact, the average age of game players was 29 and the average age of buyers was 36, with men making up 59 percent of the playing audience," ESA found. Their game playing is at the expense of watching TV and going to the movies, and 43% of them play games online an hour or more a week, up from 31% two years ago.

Daughter's blog, mom's dilemma

"Not long ago, a friend sent me an unsettling email," writes a mother in the Washington, D.C., area in a commentary at the Christian Science Monitor. "She'd discovered the Internet links for her daughter's and my daughter's online journals. Was I interested in reading my daughter's?" Would she end up doing so? You'll see that arriving at the answer was neither simple nor applicable to all parent-child relationships, but it helps to read a fellow parent's thinking process on a tough issue. Please email me (or click on "comments" just below) if you've faced a similar question - I'd love to hear what you and your child worked out.

Cyberbullying: Thorny new parenting problem

As some of us know only too well, technology's instant and macro-level results (via the Web, IM, etc.) mean two things to pranksters and the grownups in their lives: They've "all but erased the reflection time that once existed between the planning of a silly prank - or a serious stunt - and its commission" and "made it nearly impossible to contain a regrettable deed - because once committed, there's almost no way to retrieve and destroy all evidence of it in cyberspace," writes Mark Franek, dean of students at Philadelphia's William Penn Charter School, in a Christian Science Monitor oped piece. A mean instant message to 140 kids on a child's buddy list can not only hurt the subject of that IM but can be archived for Googling by her future acquaintances, employers, etc. An inappropriate photo taken by picture phone in a school locker room and posted in a blog can be found and circulated around the Net indefinitely by total strangers who could be criminally prosecuted for doing so. "Schools, technology companies, and parents need to educate themselves and take responsibility for getting this growing problem under control," Mark writes. He provides some helpful tips for schools and parents. Our street smarts can help protect tech-whizkids from making big mistakes with technologies that not only enable but magnify and broadcast those mistakes.



For an email conversation with Bill Belsey, Canada's top expert on the subject, see "The growing cyberbullying problem" in the 2/6/04 issue of my newsletter.

File-sharing privacy risks to families

Parents, if you don't know that kids' file-sharing (or digital music downloading) activities can be a family privacy risk, here's a heads-up. We asked Tim Lordan, head of Washington-based GetNetWise.org, about this issue, and he said that - though reports of identity theft and other privacy violations are as yet nonexistent - exposing personal files on the P2P networks is definitely happening. By personal files, we mean emails, tax returns, medical records, and in some cases people's entire hard drives. Tim pointed to a study done over a year ago that found this kind of file-sharing a widespread mistake, partly because the design of the software (whether it's the well-known Kazaa or one of the newer, more obscure programs) is confusing. "Many users [especially kids eager to find their favorite songs] do not realize that when they add files to the download folder, all the files in the directory, as well as the directories below it, can be recursively shared," reported PCWorld in its coverage of the study. "The report also criticizes the way the software searches for files to be shared, noting that it does not give criteria for discovering folders to be shared, such as searching only for media files. Therefore, when it discovers a folder to be shared, 'it presumes that users haveba perfect knowledge of what kinds of files are contained in those folders and what will be shared,' the researchers wrote."



For more on this, see "A tech-literate dad on file-sharing" in the 1/16/04 issue of my newsletter.

Game Boy: Grown women vs. teen boys

Game Boy is not going away any time soon. The number of people using handheld game players will grown from 23 million last year to 43 million in 2009, when they'll be a $2.7 billion market, CNET reports, citing a Jupiter Research study. "The study looked at users of game devices ... as well as people who play more than five hours per week on PDAs (personal digital assistants) and cell phones - a group expected to grow at an average annual rate of 16% through 2009," CNET adds. The most interesting figures, though are the age and gender breakdowns: Of the 17% of online adults who own handheld game devices, nearly two-thirds are women. Teens are "almost the opposite": of the 34% of teens who own handheld game devices, nearly two-thirds are boys. Game devices were a major draw at this week's huge game show, Electronic Entertainment Expo, E3, in Los Angeles.

Checking video games' ed value

The Education Arcade - a consortium of educators, policymakers, game developers, and gaming publishers - wants to help parents looking for value beyond entertainment. The group has launched a "games for learning" seal-of-approval program, the Toronto Globe & Mail reports. "Beyond labels, the group hopes to persuade game companies to make more educational games. It could be a tough sell, though, in an industry that favours low-risk, high-profit sequels built on established franchises," according to the Globe & Mail.

Sasser kid: He did it for mom?!

Here's hoping no other mother's teenage son supports her career in quite this way! The Verdun, Germany, prosecutor's office said it was possible that 18-year-old Sven Jaschan's motive for creating the Sasser worm that "caused chaos around the world ... may have been to drum up business for his mother." Sven's mom and stepfather run a computer tech-support business, Reuters reports. The boy "could face trial in June on charges of computer sabotage, which carry a maximum five-year prison sentence. But the punishment may be less severe because ... [Sven] was 17 when the crimes were committed." The boy's tech teacher told the media he was very skilled (German police believe he also wrote all 28 variants of the earlier Netsky worm) but should've understood the implications better.



The 5th Sasser variant discovered within hours of Sven's arrest last Friday appears to have been an effort on his part to limit the worm's damage, backing up the idea that this kid is more misguided than malicious. In its code is a warning to users "whose computers are vulnerable that their systems have not been patched," CNET reports.

Rapid growth in hate sites: New study

To a parent, this means our kids can encounter hate and bigotry - sometimes graphically depicted - on the Web as easily as pornography. SurfControl, a UK-based Net-filtering company that monitors thousands of Web sites in this category, found that the number of hate and violence sites has increased 25% just since January, and 300% since 2000, The Register reports. SurfControl says it was monitoring about 2,756 Web sites that "promote hatred against Americans, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals and people of non-European ancestry, as well as graphic violence" in 2000. By last month it was monitoring 10,926 such sites. SurfControl "went on to claim that some existing hate sites have expanded in shocking or curious ways, such as the inclusion of graphic images of dead and mutilated human beings. Another example given by the company was a white supremacy Web site that included a dating service and a $1,000 scholarship contest for a student that could write the best essay on 'actionable, practical solutions' for dealing with anyone who is not white."

Sasser kid caught

It took a week for law enforcement to find at least one of the alleged creators (notice all those qualifiers) of the latest Net scourge, and he's a teenager. Either police are getting faster, or international cooperation better, but he appears to have been an 18-year-old German high school student was arrested last Friday and later released, having admitted to creating the Sasser worm that affected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, the BBC reports. But he may not have been the worm's only creator - since a new variant was circulating the Net two days after his arrest, and computer security experts told ComputerWeekly.com that they thought a group was behind Sasser.



Apparently, it was a tip to Microsoft - which offers rewards to people who turn in virus writers - that led to the arrest. According to SearchSecurity.com, a group of people in Lower Saxony last Wednesday asked Microsoft about a reward if they turned the young man in. Could it be the group of hackers who launched the worm? See our Sasser coverage in last week's issue of the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter.

No more 99 cents/tune?

Young music fans may increasingly be hitting up Mom or Dad for "legit" downloads, witness iTunes's latest news. Apple "has now signed agreements with EMI, Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), Sony, Universal, and Warner that will see prices on some songs rise from 99c to $1.25, an increase of over 26%" - lower, at least than the $2.99 the labels had been pushing for, The Register reports. As for album prices, some will remain $9.99, others are already $16.99, a 70% hike, The Register adds. Of course one impact will be increased revenue for the labels. But they will also be sending more and more fans to indie labels and new bands

Another much more Between this news and ever-burgeoning anti-piracy lawsuits, the record industry must either be in very difficult straits or want to send more and more fans to the indie labels.

Sasser not carried by email

Just when we thought we had a handle on virus-by-email-attachment. Neither you nor your kids could get your PCs infected by the Sasser worm by opening an email attachment. It just arrives through a port on PCs that aren't secured with the latest Microsoft patch. "The worm spreads by scanning different ranges of Internet addresses using a specific application data channel, or port, numbered 445," CNET reported. Four versions have been circulating around the Net just since last weekend. Fortunately, it "appears to do no lasting damage" to individual PCs, even though about 80% of PCs affected by it belonged to families or students, CNET later reported. It just annoyingly "causes the computer to shut down, then reboot ... continuously." The best prevention measure is to keep up to date with Microsoft patches and your firewall going. CNET explained that "the worms infect vulnerable systems by establishing a remote connection to the targeted computer, installing a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server and then downloading themselves to the new host." As of Tuesday, Sasser versions didn't open a "backdoor" to PCs that would allow spammers and other hackers to take control of them. But PC security experts didn't rule that possibility out for future versions. Microsoft is considering a plan to automate worm-zapping, Internet News reports.



Here's SafeKids.com on the Sasser worm, complete with links to prevention and cure. And here's Microsoft's page specifically on Sasser. Also, the Washington Post tells how to remove Sasser.