network woes

We had a bit of a scare on Thursday. Norton discovered a worm on my computer, we have no idea how it got there but it made me grateful for Norton for a change (usually I am griping about the constant interference that it causes - it slows down everything I want to do with its incessant virus scans of everything!). Anyway, Jeff couldn't figure out how it could have gotten onto my computer, since I rarely download anything off the internet and use a somewhat obscure e-mail program that is not prone to unleashing viruses onto my system. Jeff looked at the security logs on my computer and discovered that since June 11th there have been anonymous logons to my computer numerous times each day. He put all the Windows updates onto my system and instituted passwords for each user and thought that would probably take care of the problem, but then last night he found out that there had been one successful anonymous logon yesterday. At this point I was having visions of some greasy-haired malicious nerd sitting in a dark basement in Vancouver, clicking away at his keyboard and using my computer for all his nefarious schemes. Eventually after much research Jeff figured out that the anonymous logons are being caused by the stupid way that the network is set up in this apartment building. They are not malicious as far as I can understand; it looks like each time someone else in the building logs onto the network, their computer looks around for shared files on other machines connected to the network. I will be really glad to get back to having our home network with a nice router that can provide us with a safe firewall.

I have lots to write about today.. watch for more posts.