Tell IM-ers about new worm!

Watch out, parents of IM-ers, a nasty email-carried worm that started going around on April Fool's Day is now pestering MSN Messenger users. Posing as Microsoft, Trend Micro, and Symantec, the Chod.B worm "sends out messages to contacts from the infected user's address book, warning them that they are about to receive a file," CNET reports. "The virus then sends a file designed to infect the recipient's system." Tell your kids it looks like it's coming from someone on their buddy list and "sounds" like a friend, saying, "'Check out what I just found on the Internet." The cardinal IM rule they need to have memorized is not to click on *any* file sent them, even from a "buddy" before starting a new, *separate* conversation with that buddy, or screenname, and asking him or her if s/he sent that file. (The worm grabs screennames from people's address books on PCs it has infected in order to pose as buddies.) Also tell them to be wary of clicking on links friends tell them to go to. For more, see the CNET piece. Another little nasty is the fake BlueMountain e-greeting going around, disguising a virus. How to tell? BlueMountain told the Washington Post that "unlike authentic BlueMountain greeting card invites, which come from the email address of the person sending the greeting, the scam messages use a spoofed BlueMountain email address." As for the big picture, ZDNET reports that the quantity of IM threats like these to PC security "increased 250% in the first quarter of 2005."