VirusScan

I had a terrible scare yesterday afternoon with my computer at work. When I got back after lunch, there was Delivery Failure Notification in my Inbox. I get those occasionally and didn't think anything about it until I read the address. I knew I had not sent anything out that day so I looked at the email! I almost fell out of my chair - I was absolutely mortified to think that something like that went out with my email address on it (and from a public school office!). I told my supervisor, which could have been scary as something like this can be grounds for termination! He laughed it off as he knew I would never have anything to do with a site like this email. I finally was able to get our head of the IT department to look at the email. He didn't really think it was too much of an issue but told me he would look into it. However in just a few minutes, he came back in and said this "thing" had turned off my firewall and then tried to send out these emails! I was in the middle of reports for a board meeting that was taking place in just a few hours. I saved what I was doing to a drive that could be accessed from a different source and shut everything down.

Our IT dept. came and took my machine today, to clean it, delete the email, scan everything and then bring it back to me. I was out of the office for a big part of the day so it was actually a good time for my computer to be unavailable. I got to visit with the head of our IT dept. this afternoon and he explained a little further how things like this can come in sometimes. We talked about the "creeps" that would do something like this. I was actually a little glad it was me and not someone else. My boss and everyone around me knew I would never have anything to do with a site like this and they were not concerend about it (other than maintaining the safety of our district's server network). I guess it could have been a lot worse.

I don't know if it's the thrill of trying to do something like this and get away with it, or if that even matters to those who do these things! Whatever it is - they are getting much more sophisticated about it. Our IT dept. updates multiple times a day to catch things like this but somehow, this one slipped through.

That's kind of the way sin can be for us. Sometimes we look up and it has slipped through our virus scans, our firewalls, our spyware, and anything else we can put in place to stop it. It only takes a little time for it to come in and take over. We have to be alert and ready, updating multiple times per day (prayer, confession to God, Bible study, etc.) to stop it and keep it out of our lives.