Computer Viruses and Email SPAM

SDUCS Trend OfficeScan Antivirus Installation Website

District employees may download and install Trend Office Scan Solution on district owned computers. PC that are in Active Directory already have Trend installed. District employees can also purchase Trend for their personal home computer if desired.

To install Trend Office Scan Solution click here.

Background:

A computer virus (or worm or Trojan horse) is a program or piece of code that is loaded onto a computer, usually without
the users’ knowledge. Even a simple virus is dangerous because it will quickly use all available memory and bring the
system to a halt. More dangerous types of viruses are capable of transmitting themselves across networks and bypassing
security systems.

Email SPAM can generally be defined as Electronic junk mail or any unsolicited e-mail such as email advertising for some
product sent to an individual, mailing list or newsgroup.

Infection Protection:

The Information Technology department has anti-virus software available for all district staff. Trend Anti-Virus has already
been automatically installed on all IBM PC’s that run Novell and Active Directory services. Individuals on PC’s that are not
on Novell or Active Directory (typically, classroom computers and labs) should take advantage of downloading and
installing Trend Anti-Virus, available here:
http://sandi.net/it/virus.htm
• Computer Labs are MOST affected by virus activity!
• Please insure that your labs’ computers have Trend installed.
• Any PC that is NOT protected by Trend MUST be disconnected from the district network!

Slamming the SPAM:

The Information Technology Department is aware of the issue of SPAM and has looked at and implemented a number of
solutions to keep SPAM from reaching employees. New technology installed at the district “firewall” has insured that the
majority of these emails are successfully filtered out. On a typical day, the district receives over 340,000 email messages,
and up to 90% of those emails are identified as SPAM by our filtering systems and kept from reaching district staff. SPAM
is a fact of life, and the occasional unwanted email may make it to your mailbox – simply delete these unwanted
messages and be aware that such instances are being kept to an absolute minimum.
Some tips to reduce your chance of receiving SPAM email:

• Restrict your district email address to district related business. Giving out your district email address to a web site may open you up to unwanted spam.
  

• Delete junk email messages. Or, take advantage of the junk email filter in Microsoft Outlook, found in the “Options” area of OWA. This will allow you to block senders of spam.

• Don’t reply to spam. This includes not responding to such messages that offer an option to “remove me from your list.”

• Do NOT give personal information in an email. Most legitimate companies would never ask you for personal information. If a company you trust, such as your credit card company or bank, appears to ask for personal information, check into it further.

Sometimes we create our own SPAM in the form of forwarding email to many of our fellow users, much of which may be
unwelcome by the recipients. It is best NOT to forward chain email messages. Not only do you lose control over who sees
your email address (which may increase your chance of receiving SPAM), but you may also be furthering a hoax or aiding
in the delivery of a virus. Verify email hoaxes first by using urban legend-checking sites, such as http://www.snopes.com
For more information on slamming your SPAM, please review the article “Slam the Spam: Tips to Reduce Junk E-mail”
found under the “News” box on the “For District Staff” web page, off of the district home page at http://sandi.net/