This Story Posted:
April 9th

[4:38 PM]
CanOpener Can Help Avoid Melissa-Like Viruses

Ken Abbott of Abbott Systems sent us a note saying that CanOpener can help avoid viruses like the Melissa Virus that recently plagued the Internet. This is because of the way that CanOpener actually opens the files. The message from Abbott Systems: CanOpener lets users safely read text in a suspect file without triggering a virus. They can even extract the text if they wish. It is especially effective against "Melissa" type viruses. "CanOpener eliminates the worry of suspect files, said Ken Abbott, company President, "we're telling users who are concerned about foreign or mystery files: if in doubt, open the file with CanOpener first and check the contents." The company said that CanOpener is a compliment, not a replacement for a virus checker, but as new viruses rapidly appear, it may take time for virus checkers to catch up. CanOpener can be used anytime to screen suspect files by safely viewing their contents. CanOpener also has special text filters that allow users to.. Extract Names, Phone Numbers, URLs, Email, Web and IP Addresses. Strip HTML Coding. Remove extra Carriage Returns and blank spaces from email and Web text. Extract important sentences such as questions or anything containing $'s and numbers. Rapidly find clean text in files that contain huge amounts of 'garbage' You can grab CanOpener from the Abbott Systems web site. The Mac Observer Spin: Since CanOpener does not use proprietary formatting and other information in files when it opens them, it does not trigger things like Word Macro viruses. This does NOT mean that CanOpener will detect or eliminate a virus from an infected file, it simply means that one can access the text content of a file without giving a potential virus the opportunity to do its work. Abbott Systems