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• A real virus this time, especially for aol people. It comes via an email attachment called picture.exe. It is technically a Trojan horse. It crawls through your hard drive gathering information about you, whom you visit, etc. in your aol files. Then it tries to send this information via the net to an address in China. A similar Trojan horse was seen a few years ago, also sending messages to China. I haven't checked this out, but I got it from the Ziff-Davis site, so I assume it is OK. You can check it out yourself at www.urbanlegends.miningco.com. Let me know what you find.
• A Bug for All. Many computers working on Windows programs will have their clocks set one hour earlier on 1 April 2001. This won't affect most people, but a patch is ready at the microsoft web site.
• An insidious rumor directed toward African-Americans is making the rounds via e-mail and other means. It says that African-Americans' right to vote will expire in the year 2007. It won't. Some provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act are up for review that year (including Federal monitoring of southern states voting records), but no one is going to lose their voting privileges. The rumor is so rampant that the Justice Department has debunked it on their web site. As a political analyst said, "The Web has good useful information, but it also has a lot of garbage. It's developing a fairly notorious reputation for spreading bad information and this fits that category."

• If someone calls to say they are from your phone company and asks you to dial 90# (nine-zero-pound sign) to help the company test their line, don't do it. Telephone companies test lines without your help. By doing this you give the caller (often someone in prison) access to your number, allowing them to call long-distance on your bill.

• Is your Internet connection slowing down? Can your ISP do nothing about it? Do you live in an older house? It might be your phone line. Call the telephone company and ask them to check it. This happened to me and they found that the line was going fast. They replaced it for free and now I am surfing like a California blond.
• Have you been defrauded over the 'Net from the U.S. or Canada? Any fraud you're caught in from a Web site, in chat rooms, bulletin boards or newsgroups or via e-mail should be reported to the National Fraud Information Center. Call 1-800-876-7060, complete an on-line form at http://www.fraud.com or write NFIC, P.O. Box 65868, Washington DC 20035.

• Trouble seeing the new index pages? A couple of people have told me that they were hard to see through the backgrounds. I have altered them. If you still have trouble, hit "refresh." If they are still hard to read let me know.
• Want to have beads decorate the background of your computer screen? If you have Internet Explorer 3.0 and Windows 95, choose any picture you like on thebeadsite.com. Right-click on your mouse and click on Set As Wallpaper. The next time you go to your Desktop, the beads will be your background. To switch between this and other backgrounds go to My Computer/Control Panel/Display. The bead picture will be labeled "Internet Explorer Wallpaper." Does anyone know of similar tricks for other OSs, Browsers and versions? Let me know.
• Worried by emails that warn you of viruses? Most of these e-mailings are based on hoaxes. Go to www.kumite.com/myths. They are most reliable about telling you which viruses are hoaxes. If your warning is, send it back to the person would sent it, tell them about this site and have them inform all the people they warned and the person that warned them.
• Greedy for getting from $1000 to $5000 from Bill Gates or Walt Disney, Jr.? Considering sending this e-chain letter message to 10 of your e-friends? Another hoax. Check it out at www.urbanlegends.miningco.com. The headline reads "Shocking evidence that Walt Disney named one of his daughters 'Walt, Jr.'" Do the same with this as you would for a virus hoax (see above).

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