More Worms In the previous newsletter, I said August had been a bad month for computer worms, with the Blaster and the SoBig.F. Well, those have disappeared for the time being to be replaced by another, W32.Swen.A@mm, which Symantec originally called Automat.AHB.
The email carrying the new worm most often is designed to look like it is coming from Microsoft. It has a very Microsoft-appearing graphic across the top of the email and begins with the following text:

Microsoft Customer

this is the latest version of security update, the "September 2003, Cumulative Patch" update which fixes all known security vulnerabilities affecting MS Internet Explorer, …….

The intent is to have you run the attached file and thus infect your computer.
Never run an attached file to an email message. And never believe that Microsoft is sending you a message telling you to do so. Microsoft does not send such email messages.

I simply deleted the first 100 or so such messages that came in; then, after an update to my Norton AntiVirus it started intercepting them, and finally my ISP, RoadRunner, started intercepting many of them at the mail server and removing the virus--but still sending a message to me that it had removed a virus for the message. However, all this intercepting did nothing to keep me from being inundated with several hundred such messages each day for the last week. It has slowed a bit, but I am sure that by the end of today I will have deleted over 100 such messages.
One of our members got so overwhelmed in the first couple days of the attack that he simply abandoned his email address for a new one. I really don’t have that option. What is interesting is that for several years most of the junk email that came to me came via my NetCom (Earthlink) email address. The RoadRunner one was fairly free of junk email (even though the address is plastered all over several websites and in the Usenet newsgroups). These last three viruses, however, that have bombarded me for the past month or more with up to 350 messages in a day come almost exclusively via the RoadRunner address.

Just think how bad things would be if I were someone who was important and had my email address plastered everywhere. Perhaps, then, I would have to do what another one of our members who uses Earthlink did. She set up an Earthlink feature that only allows people on a list managed by her to send email messages to her. If you are not on the list, as was the case for me, when sending her an email, you get a return email from Earthlink wanting to know if you would like to request to be on the honored list. I responded in the affirmative and was put on the list of acceptable emailers, but you know no spammer or virus sender is going to request such permission--and thus she is safe from them. Of course, some of her friends may opt out also. I don’t think RoadRunner has such a feature.

VBA SIG and Outlook Last meeting Kevan Sheridan took us through a tour of Microsoft Outlook showing us many of the features of this contact list, email client, calendar, etc. management program. Many in the audience were quite impressed by its features, especially for those involved in a work group environment where meetings need to be scheduled and the answering of emails needs to be prioritized.

Another interesting aspect of Outlook is the ability to use Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to program Outlook. Most such programming is involved with automating processes in Outlook or creating customized forms. But in our most recent VBA SIG, I went in a different direction: A routine to retrieve the particulars (Date, Sender, Subject, etc.) of each message in, say, the Inbox and place it in a database. This could actually be quite useful and serve as an accessible backup of your Inbox messages. You put the code below in the Tools | Macro | Visual Basic Editor section of Outlook. Furthermore, in the Visual Basic Editor, you need to set a reference to the Microsoft Office DAO 3.6 Object Library. Finally, you need to create an Access database named OutlookData.mdb with the appropriate fields to accept the data.

Here is the code (you are not expected to follow it unless you have some experience with VBA):

Dim ol As Outlook.Application
Dim ns As NameSpace
Dim myfolder As MAPIFolder
Dim MyDatabase As DAO.Database
Dim MyRecordset As DAO.Recordset
Dim i As Integer
'establish a connection and logon
Set ol = CreateObject("outlook.application")
Set ns = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI")
ns.Logon
'get default Inbox Items folder
Set myfolder = ns.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
MsgBox ("There are " & myfolder.Items.Count & " Inbox Items")
Set MyDatabase = DAO.OpenDatabase("C:\My Documents\Access\OutlookData.mdb")
Set MyRecordset = MyDatabase.OpenRecordset("Inbox")
'loop through all the Inbox items
For i = 1 To myfolder.Items.Count
MyRecordset.AddNew
MyRecordset.Fields("Date") = myfolder.Items(i).SentOn
MyRecordset.Fields("Sender") = myfolder.Items(i).SenderName
MyRecordset.Fields("subject") = myfolder.Items(i).Subject
MyRecordset.Fields("Body") = myfolder.Items(i).Body
MyRecordset.Fields("HTML") = CStr(myfolder.Items(i).HTMLBody)
MsgBox (CStr(myfolder.Items(i).HTMLBody))
MyRecordset.Update
Next
MyRecordset.Close
MyDatabase.Close
Set MyRecordset = Nothing
Set MyDatabase = Nothing

That is it. See how useful programming can be. Of course, you could do something similar for your Sent Items.

There is no equivalent code for getting the Inbox items in Outlook Express. Outlook Express is not programmable. One time I saw a shareware program that would convert any folder in Outlook Express to a text file (a very large text file in some cases).

You could, however, use my method to put the Inbox messages in Outlook Express into a database by first importing all your Outlook Express Inbox messages into Outlook and then applying my method to the Inbox folder in Outlook. The process could be further refined so that you could write the code to allow you to actually select from the list of all messages a sub collection that you wish to put in the database.

Just a thought What is going to happen to all your old email messages? Are they going to be like old, saved letters that can be read 100 years later. I don’t think so. Hard drives will fail. Even if CDs don’t degrade (which I think they will), what device will read them 100 years down the road?

If you want to preserve your important messages, you can put them in a database that you periodically import into the latest such program and save the data to CDs which you periodically save to newer media (newer CDs or whatever the newest medium is). Of course, this depends on you being around to keep this process going. Then, on the other hand, you can do the old fashioned thing and print them out on good quality paper and store the paper versions. But, then, you have to worry about the longevity of the ink your printer used. Such worries are never ending.

I wouldn’t worry about it much, though, since probably 99.9% of our emails are not of any long-term value anyway. But it is an interesting question. u