Windows Genuine Advantage is still genuinely bad

By Ryan Russell

Microsoft's system for validating Windows before users can download most updates continues to be a problem for legitimate customers and for Internet security as a whole.

Despite claims of offering better security, Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) serves only Microsoft's marketing interests — but you can eliminate the need for WGA if you know the trick.

Microsoft has long been considered a marketing bully, but with WGA the company has taken its lack of consideration for its customers to a new low.

Windows Secrets has been tracking the WGA story for years. Editorial director Brian Livingston aptly labeled an earlier version of WGA as "Microsoft spyware" in a June 15, 2006, Top Story.

More recently, Brian remarked in a March 30, 2009, news update that PCs failing WGA validation don't automatically receive all available patches from Microsoft. That spawned a critique from a Microsoft spokeswoman which was printed, along with Brian's response, in technical editor Dennis O'Reilly's Known Issues column on April 2. (There's also an Office Genuine Advantage program, which you hear less about but has the same problems as WGA.)

We all want Windows systems throughout the world to be patched for security problems as soon as fixes are released. As a result of the fuss raised by the articles mentioned above, I decided to take another look at WGA.

Here's what happens if a Windows machine fails WGA validation (or the PC's owner, based on tales of disabled machines, is too frightened to run WGA):

* Automatic Updates. If the machine is configured with Automatic Updates (AU) enabled, Microsoft installs only those security patches that the company rates as "Critical." Security patches rated "Important," "Moderate," and below are not installed by AU, and no other updates of any kind are installed.

* Windows Update and Microsoft Update. Microsoft's on-demand patching programs, known as Windows Update (which updates Windows) and Microsoft Update (which updates Windows and other Microsoft products) will refuse to run.

* Manual downloads. Security patches of all levels of severity can be downloaded manually from various Microsoft Web pages and installed individually, if you know where to look.

The third point is the trick to updating a Windows system, regardless of whether it passes WGA validation or you run WGA at all.

Let's examine how various people and companies are using this method.

How companies patch Windows and avoid WGA

An individual who wants to avoid WGA hassles could visit Microsoft's current security bulletin page and browse every new patch and advisory. However, it's unreasonable to expect average Windows users to read each bulletin and decide which patches to install.

A better solution is to use patch-management (PM) software. Every day, dozens of third-party vendors obtain patches from known locations that Microsoft hosts on the Internet. Once the patches are downloaded by the vendors, their software can push the patches out to PCs on a LAN with no worries about WGA. (Disclosure: The company I work for, BigFix Inc., sells a patch-management product that does this for large enterprises.)

Corporations should install a PM solution that resides on a server and pushes patches to individual PCs across a LAN. Network Computing publishes a Rolling Reviews page that analyzes several major PM applications.

Individual PC users have several options to install all security patches — whether rated "Critical," "Important," or any other level of severity — without WGA hassles. The following are a few examples:

* The Software Patch. You can do without Automatic Updates and Windows Update/Microsoft Update, which can be hamstrung by WGA, by using The Software Patch. This is a free Web service that WS contributing editor Scott Dunn reviewed — along with a handful of other alternative update services — in his Oct. 4, 2007, Top Story.

* Online Software Inspector. My Dec. 18, 2008, column described Secunia.com's Online Software Inspector (OSI). This free service scans your PC on demand. OSI then enumerates the security patches that are needed by your copy of Windows, in addition to patches for dozens of applications from Microsoft and other software vendors.

* Personal Software Inspector. My previous column on OSI also described Secunia's Personal Software Inspector (PSI). This is a free download that you install and run on your PC. At present, its primary purpose is to inform you of security updates for hundreds of applications, and you should run PSI in conjunction with Windows Update or Microsoft Update.

It's beyond the scope of today's article to rate the pros and cons of every patching alternative. I hope to bring you a new review of the latest products and services in the coming weeks.

The third-party services mentioned above are compelled by Microsoft to get Windows patches directly from Microsoft's own servers. That means these services can only install security patches and other updates whose files will install without requiring WGA validation.

Fortunately, almost all Windows security patches (of all severity levels) and many other Microsoft updates install fine — regardless of WGA — if you download the files directly or via a third-party service. Microsoft currently lists on a Genuine Software page a few of its apps that do require WGA, such as Windows Defender, Windows Media Player, and Calculator Plus.

In fairness, Microsoft should get credit for posting all of its security patches (of all levels of severity) on publicly available URLs. At least this policy does provide the files to patch-management professionals who know these locations. By contrast, such firms as Red Hat, Sun, and IBM require contracts and log-in credentials before you can obtain some of these companies' Linux, Solaris, and AIX patches, respectively.

The big question is this: why would Microsoft cripple its consumer patching tools — Windows Update and Microsoft Update — by disabling them if a PC doesn't pass WGA validation? The only logical reason I can think of is because Microsoft wants to push WGA, and denying updates to users is the best stick the company can come up with. I believe this decision is a huge mistake.

Windows Update is a crucial service that must remain free from chicanery, because Windows Update is the default program for on-demand security checkups. In computing, defaults are everything. Windows Update is installed and available in every recent copy of Windows on the planet, whether those machines are correctly licensed or not.

Many people disable Automatic Updates because it's intrusive and has been used in the past to install WGA and other nonsecurity updates. If users can't run Windows Update as an alternative to AU, there's a massive problem on the Internet. The battle against malware is already bad enough, and we don't need anything to make the problem worse. When millions of computers become infected, the attacks from these machines become a problem for you, the paying customer of Microsoft.

DRM exists at the expense of paying customers

Call it what you will: WGA, Digital Rights Management (DRM), anti-piracy, or copy protection. It abuses the hospitality of paying customers in an attempt to thwart those who don't want to pay. I don't object one bit to paying Microsoft for the software I use. I do object to being forced to help a company in futile efforts to combat copyright violators.

Copy-protection harms legitimate users who are inconvenienced at best and forced to cope with nonfunctional software at worst. The bad guys, by contrast, aren't harmed much at all. Pirate operations have the money and time to defeat every copy-protection mechanism. Once pirates have broken a DRM scheme, the unlocked software might be salable for months without the pirates' needing to deal with the protection any further.

Do you dislike having to insert a CD into a drive to update Microsoft Office or play a game? Guess what: users of the pirated versions of those programs generally don't have to deal with that. Only the legitimate buyers are inconvenienced.

I've been analyzing flavors of copy protection since the early 1980s. During those nearly 30 years, it's always been the same. Copy protection primarily hurts legitimate users while giving bad guys merely a short period of entertainment.

I do recognize the gray area between the two extremes. There are many users who might violate a software publisher's copyright if it were convenient to do so. But I still believe that the punishment imposed on a software company's best customers is not worth the tiny impact on the real pirates.

I'm not saying Microsoft has to give away its products for free. I'm saying that a copyright owner's battle against piracy is not my problem, so please quit making my life hard in a vain attempt to resolve your legal issues.

Microsoft's lack of support for its best users, in the name of protecting intellectual property, sometimes reaches absurd levels. A recent example of this is Microsoft's refusal to support its software on virtual machines unless the VM software is Microsoft's own. (You can read the details about this in my blog entry posted April 2.)

Microsoft has gotten really aggressive about license protection. The pendulum needs to swing back in the direction of making things easier for the company's customers.

3-D Headed To Your Living Room

People in 70 million homes will soon be able to watch 3-D TV, destroying Hollywood's selling point that 3-D movies offer an experience you can't get at home.

Signet International Holdings is turning AMG TV into the first 3-D broadcast network. The network has more than 200 affiliates and is partnering with Kerner Broadcast Co. to use its 3-D TV technology.

AMG TV reaches 70 million homes, meaning that soon 3-D TV will reach more people than can see 3-D movies (currently available in roughly 2,300 theaters). One of the biggest arguments studios have been using to sell consumers and theater chains on 3-D movies is that those films provide an experience you can't get at home. Who knows how well their argument will hold up once people are able to watch 3-D programming in their living rooms?

AMG ultimately wants to be broadcasting in 3-D fulltime but will begin by airing a few hours of in-your-face shows between late November and the end of 2009. In order to make it possible for viewers to see the images in 3-D, Kerner plans to introduce a $50 add-on that will turn an HD TV into a 3-D TV. The cost of glasses is included in the $50 fee.

Ebay`s Stupid Policy on Optional Insurance

EBay is merely running on the fumes of its early entry in the Internet. If it were entering the field today, given its complete contempt for its sellers, it would fail miserably. Ask any power seller on eBay and he'll no doubt have more than a 100 complaints about what's wrong with the company that seems to be run completely by idiots.

I will focus on one item today: eBay's policy on optional insurance.

Here's how it works. let's suppose you just sold a one hundred dollar watch and your listing says, "Shipping Insurance US $2.00 - Optional".

Now let's also suppose that the buyer decides not to take insurance and the package is lost - who is out the watch?

If you guessed the buyer - BUZZZZ - wrong answer. According to eBay the buyer never received the package and therefore, the seller is out the money.

But wait, if that's true, then no buyer should ever pay for insurance if the seller advertises "Optional Insurance."

Likewise, since insurance is the responsibility of the seller, sellers should always pay for insurance.

So here is my advice to my readers who are buyers: If you see "optional insurance" never pay for it since you cannot lose anything if the package is lost.

Here is my advice to my readers who are sellers: Always advertise optional insurance because not everyone reads my blog. If your buyer is smart enough not to take the optional insurance than insure it yourself. In this way you always get some money from buyers who are not familiar with eBay's' policies.

Of course, in time, eventually every buyer will know never to pay for optional insurance and therefore eventually every buyer will find even posting the words "optional insurance" as pointless and the feature should disappear since it is really a moronic piece of business.

Now you may object that eBay is right that the seller is always responsible for insuring the package. I happen to agree, the seller should be the one insuring the package; however, by allowing the words "optional insurance" eBay is facilitating a situation where a seller can con uninformed buyers into paying for insurance they shouldn't be paying for. There are also, no doubt, quite a number of sellers who have gotten burned because they thought that if buyers turned down "optional insurance" and the package got lost, that the buyer would be responsible.

Now take this situation: The buyer opted out of "optional insurance" - you the seller is now out the watch and the money because eBay made you give it back when the package was reported lost. A week later, UPS found the package and delivered it to your buyer who has already had his money returned. Now you are forced to beg the buyer to pay you for the watch. If he decides not to pay, what are you going to do, leave a negative feedback? You can't, which is a topic for another stupid business practice by eBay.

Then there are unscrupulous sellers who list "Optional Insurance" during the sale, but send an invoice to the final bidder as "insurance required".

If eBay simply announced that no one can put up an "optional insurance" feature then sellers won't get stuck in a situation as above, and buyers won't be fooled into paying for something the seller must always pay for anyway.

EBay shows contempt for both ends of its customer base. And that, my dear readers, is a business run by idiots.

Why Wikipedia Works

Wikipedia: Exploring Fact City
By NOAM COHEN

Contributors to Wikipedia have wondered aloud lately if — perish the thought — they are running out of topics. The obvious articles, low-hanging fruit like “China,” “Moses” and “Homer Simpson,” have been written and rewritten hundreds of times. There are more than 2.8 million articles on the English version of Wikipedia alone. Already looking back, Wikipedia this month got its first serious memoir, “The Wikipedia Revolution,” by Andrew Lih, an early Wikipedian (yes, that is what they call themselves), who writes about how “a bunch of nobodies created the world’s greatest encyclopedia.”

But these concerns seem misplaced — Wikipedia can no more be completed than can New York City, which O. Henry predicted would be “a great place if they ever finish it.” In fact, with its millions of visitors and hundreds of thousands of volunteers, its ever-expanding total of articles and languages spoken, Wikipedia may be the closest thing to a metropolis yet seen online.

Like a city, Wikipedia is greater than the sum of its parts; for example, the random encounters there are often more compelling than the articles themselves. The search for information resembles a walk through an overbuilt quarter of an ancient capital. You circle around topics on a path that appears to be shifting. Ultimately the journey ends and you are not sure how you got there.

Wikipedia articles can send you down unlikely alleyways in two ways. First, there are links that direct you to the same article in another language, a trippy experience that sheds light on a culture. Spend time in German Wikipedia, and you find jazz musicians like Thelonious Monk with articles far longer than those written in their own language; you may also come upon odd areas of deep interest, like “pecherei,” the extraction of resin from trees — no English equivalent provided — and 15 different tools needed for the job.

Second, at the bottom of most articles, there are the categories — impromptu neighborhoods, or perhaps civic organizations, that bind together the virtual encyclopedia. There are unsurprising ones, like “Jewish comedians,” found at the bottom of the Jerry Seinfeld article; and then there are the quirky kind, like this one I stumbled upon: “Literary devices playing with meaning.” It was in the latter category that I came upon the article “Mondegreen,” which describes the phenomenon of mishearing song lyrics, which led to “Soramimi,” a Japanese term for hearing lyrics in foreign languages as Japanese phrases, which led to the discovery that the heavy metal band Metallica has a line in “Enter Sandman” that frequently is heard by Japanese as “Let’s go to Chiyoda Life Insurance.” Which led to ...

It is a tale of spontaneous organization and achievement. Until recently, Wikipedia was able to operate on a budget of less than $3 million a year. Today it is still only $7 million, all donations and grants. No advertising, no sugar daddy. A rags-to-rags story of world domination in information that could only have happened in the Internet age.

In “The City in History,” Lewis Mumford tried to explain how cities came to be: “In the earliest gathering about a grave or a painted symbol, a great stone or sacred grove, one has the beginning of a succession of civic institutions that range from the temple to the astronomical observatory, from the theater to the university.”

In its seven years of existence Wikipedia has become one of the top 10 global Web sites. It has many fewer visitors than Google, yes, but it is in shouting distance of Amazon and eBay, with more than 60 million Americans visiting in January. Hundreds of thousands of people — some anonymous, some using pseudonyms, others exactly who they say they are — have thus far come together to collaborate.

A single article, say about the Mumbai attacks last year, can have more than 1,000 contributors. Their discussions on how best to write the article can occupy pages, all guided by one of Wikipedia’s founding principles: “Assume good faith.”

Wikipedia encourages contributors to mimic the basic civility, trust, cultural acceptance and self-organizing qualities familiar to any city dweller. Why don’t people attack each other on the way home? Why do they stay in line at the bank? Why don’t people guffaw at the person with blue hair?

The police may be an obvious answer. But this misses the compact among city dwellers. Since their creation, cities have had to be accepting of strangers — no judgments — and residents learn to be subtly accommodating, outward looking.

Mumford elaborates: “Even before the city is a place of fixed residence, it begins as a meeting place to which people periodically return: the magnet comes before the container, and this ability to attract nonresidents to it for intercourse and spiritual stimulus no less than trade remains one of the essential criteria of the city, a witness to its essential dynamism, as opposed to the more fixed and indrawn form of the village, hostile to the outsider.”

The marvel of Wikipedia — and cities — is that all the intercourse and spiritual stimulus don’t make living there impossible. Rather, they are exactly what makes living there possible.

Mr. Lih at one point enlists the urban reformer Jane Jacobs to back up this point. For him, urban stability is replicated through the transparency of wikis — every change ever made at Wikipedia (every discussion as well) is recorded. Ms. Jacobs, he writes, “argued that sidewalks provided three important things: safety, contact and the assimilation of children.” She may as well have been talking about wikis, he says: “A wiki has all its activities happening in the open for inspection, as on Jacobs’s sidewalk. Trust is built by observing the actions of others in the community and discovering people with like or complementary interests.”

It is this sidewalk-like transparency and collective responsibility that makes Wikipedia as accurate as it is. The greater the foot traffic, the safer the neighborhood. Thus, oddly enough, the more popular, even controversial, an article is, the more likely it is to be accurate and free of vandalism. It is the obscure articles — the dead-end streets and industrial districts, if you will — where more mayhem can be committed. It takes longer for errors or even malice to be noticed and rooted out. (Fewer readers will be exposed to those errors, too.)

Like the modern megalopolis, Wikipedia has decentralized growth. Wikipedia adds articles the way Beijing adds neighborhoods — whenever the mood strikes. It is open to all: the sixth-grader typing in material from her homework assignment, the graduate student with a limited grasp of English. No judgments, no entry pass.

One of Wikipedia’s governing principles is N.P.O.V. (neutral point of view), in much the same way Venice or Amsterdam or New York City in their heyday were uninterested in the religious, ethnic or political fights rampaging across the world. They, like Wikipedia, were polyglot homes for all who arrived on their shores.

But perhaps the most convincing argument for Wikipedia as an urban outpost on the Internet is the deep unease — even anger — it engenders. Alone among the miraculous and destructive creations of the Internet — Google, Facebook, Flickr, eBay — Wikipedia can cause the professional classes to seethe. Or run away fast, arms flailing.

People don’t treat ineffectual inventions as taboo — that is reserved for things like evolution, alcohol or, yes, cities. And just as the world has had plenty of creationists, temperance societies and ruralists, there is a professional class of Wikipedia skeptics. They, too, have some seriously depraved behavior to expose: Wikipedia represents a world without experts! A world without commercial news outlets! A world lacking in distinction between the trivial and the profound! A world overrun with facts but lacking in wisdom!

It’s all reminiscent of the longstanding accusations made against cities: They don’t produce anything! All they do is gossip! They think they are so superior! They wouldn’t last a week if we farmers stopped shipping our food! They don’t know the meaning of real work!

This argument represents a true clash of ideas. It is clear from Mr. Lih’s account that nearly every time Wikipedia has come to a fork in the road where the project could have chosen to impose more restrictions on who could edit what — even insist on a bit of expertise — it has chosen not to. That has made all the difference. The vindication of those choices — by Wikipedia and cities — is proved each time some yokel overcomes his fear and decides to make a visit and stay awhile.

How to Twitter

How to Twitter
The social rules and tips for gaining 'followers'; why opinionated people win

*
By JULIA ANGWIN



When I first joined Twitter, I felt like I was in a noisy bar where everyone was shouting and nobody was listening.


Twitter Applications

There are thousands of third-party applications built to enhance the Twitter experience -- these are just a few of the popular ones.

Twitpic: Post a photo on Twitpic, and then share the Twitpic link via Twitter.

Twhirl: Desktop software to help you manage your Twitter account, find your @replies and shorten URLs so they can be shared on Twitter.

Tipjoy: A service that lets you send small amounts of cash across Twitter, and then tweet about your donation.

Twibs: A list of businesses on Twitter with links to their Twitter accounts.

TweetDeck: Desktop software that lets people split their tweets into columns, such as @replies, direct messages, groups and keyword searches.

Twitterholic: Ranks Twitter users by number of followers.

Twitturly: Tracks which URLs are most popular on Twitter, based on how many times they've been shared by Twitter users.

Monitter: An easy way to keep tabs on multiple searches on Twitter at the same time.

Soon, I began to decode its many mysteries: how to find a flock of followers, how to talk to them in a medium that blasts to lots of people at once and how to be witty in very tiny doses.

Twitter is a mass text-messaging service that allows you to send short 140-character updates -- or "tweets" -- to a bunch of people at once. They are your "followers." It was designed to be read on a cellphone, though many people read it online, too.

Suddenly a lot of non-tweeters are starting to feel left out. On "The Daily Show" this week, host Jon Stewart reported on Twitter with a wink (or was it a twink?) at the narcissism of the personal broadcasting system. It has a world-wide audience of six million unique visitors a month, up from 1.2 million a year ago, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

But I have to admit I didn't understand the appeal of Twitter when I joined, at the prodding of friends, in November. One answer that explains its popularity: It's not about chatting with your friends -- it's about promoting yourself.

My name was available, so I set up a profile at twitter.com/JuliaAngwin. On Twitter, however, you do not exist without followers, who subscribe to receive your messages. So I set out to follow some people in the hope that they would follow me.

I had to learn the crucial distinction between a "follower" and a "friend." On Facebook, if I'm your friend, you're my friend, and we can read all about each other. Relationships on Twitter are not reciprocal: People you follow do not have to follow you or give you permission to follow them. You just sign up and start following them. It's a bit like stalking. Heather Gold, a comedian and Twitter devotee, points out that for all its flaws, the term follower "is more honest than friend."

At first, I was the loneliest of social creatures -- a leader without followers. I tried searching for my actual real-world friends using Twitter's "Find People" function, but it was down the day I joined. (Twitter is growing so fast that short outages are not unusual.)

So I asked a few colleagues for their Twitter addresses and began following them. I also searched their public lists of followers and who they followed.

Eventually, I cobbled together a mix of people I could follow: media colleagues, friends, bloggers and various people who are known as great "tweeters," such as the chief executive of online retailer Zappos.com, Tony Hsieh, who has written quite movingly on his blog about how Twitter has changed his life. He says that being forced to bear witness to his life in 140-character bursts of prose has made him more grateful for the good moments and more amused by the bad moments.
Celebrity Tweeting

Twitter is gaining popularity as a way to reach fans, plug new projects and act like BFFs. Some recent updates from high-profile Twitter users:
[Celeb Twitter]

I discovered that a better way to get followers was to tweet. Every time I tweeted, I got a surge of followers.

Where were they coming from? The likely answer illuminates Twitter's greatest strength: It's easily searchable.

During the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in November, people scoured Twitter for postings from eye witnesses. When US Airways Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River, one of the first pictures was posted as a link on Twitter.

Similar news items may have appeared on other social networks, but they were not as easy to discover. On Facebook, most people's information is viewable only by their approved friends. MySpace profile pages are searchable, but not its blogs or status updates, and it is hard to find anyone you know because most people obscure their real names.

Now, a gaggle of unknown followers were finding something in my tweets -- and following me!

I quickly found that my general musings about life such as -- "thank god they have wifi on jury duty" -- fell like a dead weight, eliciting no response. A larger problem was that it was hard to tweet when I didn't know whom I was tweeting to. Unlike Facebook, where I know each and every one of my 287 friends, I have never met or heard of the majority of the 221 people following me on Twitter.

To understand the medium, I studied others' tweets. Former Time magazine writer Ana Marie Cox's tweets are a poetic mix of moments like this: "Afternoon walk. Beautiful day, I now see."
[Twitter] Stuart Bradford

And she included wry political commentary. Forwarding a tweet from Sen. John McCain during the presidential election, she wrote: "See, if only he had sent this a year earlier... RT@senjohnmccain "YEs!! I am twittering on my blackberry but not without a little help!"

I spent a surprising amount of time trying out tweets in my head before tweeting. I aimed to tweet once a day, but often came up short. I found it difficult to fit in both news and opinion. Without a point of view, though, my updates were pretty boring. So, for instance, I changed "eating strawberries during a snowstorm." Into "eating strawberries during a snowstorm. not carbon efficient but lovely."

Another trick: including a short link to a Web site, or my own stories (using link-shrinking services like TinyURL), let me use most of the rest of the 140 characters to compose a thought.

I found a good way to get followers was to get "retweeted" -- meaning that someone would pick up my tweet and send it to their followers preceded by the code "RT @juliaangwin." When I tweeted about being interviewed by Wired.com recently, two colleagues retweeted my tweet. Seven of their followers then retweeted it. As a result, I gained 22 new followers.

People also seem eager to answer questions on Twitter. I came across 25-year-old Justin Rockwell, who was spending so much time answering people's tweets about how to build better Web pages that he says he decided to try it as a business. He now makes about $350 a week scouring Twitter for people tweeting about their problems building Web pages. Using the Twitter ID ThatCSSGuy (which refers to a Web program called CSS), he offers to help solve their problems and asks for a tip in return.

But I found it difficult to acknowledge answers I received on Twitter. Twitter's reply features felt clumsy. The easiest way to reply to a tweet is to hit the @reply icon which broadcasts your answer to all your followers, essentially Twitter's equivalent of the "reply all" email function. As a result, I often didn't reply because I didn't want to spam everyone with a bunch of "thanks for your feedback" messages. So I was silent -- which made me feel even more antisocial.

Twitter wasn't designed for these kinds of social interaction or conversations. As Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told me, "Twitter is fundamentally a broadcast system." The messaging features were add-ons.

Twitter is useful precisely because so many people are talking about different things at once. When he was president of Sling Media, for instance, Jason Hirschhorn constantly monitored the keyword "sling" on Twitter. "It's an up-to-the minute temperature of what people are saying about your brand," he said. He left the consumer electronics company last month.

There are more than 2,000 Twitter applications made by other people to help you sort through all the tweets. One of my favorites is Twitturly.com, which tracks the most popular URLs (or Web links) being shared across Twitter. Others such as Tweetdeck and Twhirl, help you manage and organize your tweets.

Still, the beauty of Twitter is that you don't have to commit to it; no one expects you to read all the tweets rolling in. As a result, Twitter makes for very good people watching -- even if you don't go home with anyone you meet there.

Marissa Mayer On Charlie Rose: The Future Of Google, Future Of Search

Koobface Worm threat

The email at bottom is real. So is the "Koobface Worm," now circulating via Facebook.
Check this Snopes.com link for a quick rundown: http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/koobface.asp

If you have a non-Mac PC, please be forewarned!
This is from CNN's web site page. It was also on CNN today. I checked and double checked to make sure this was not only true but current.

It's new, it's bad and it not only includes Facebook but all other 'social sites'.

Click on below, listen, watch and be very careful before clicking on any video.
You don't have to belong to Facebook, etc., to be hit with this virus.
If someone forwards you a video that came from Facebook, etc., then you've been hit.

Hope you all find this useful and you might want to forward it on also.
Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com#/video/us/2009/03/02/barnett.facebook.worm.cnn#/video/us/2009/03/02/barnett.faceboo..