Frequently Asked Questions about F/WIN ====================================== I ALREADY HAVE A VIRUS SCANNER. WHY USE F/WIN? a. F/WIN uses heuristic detection for macro viruses that infect Microsoft Word documents. That means it can find known and UNKNOWN macro viruses. b. F/WIN can remove known and unknown macro viruses. A lot of the regular antivirus programs can only detect macro viruses and of course they only can remove KNOWN viruses. c. F/WIN is a passive scanner. That means you don't have to use Word templates to defend yourself against macro viruses. These templates are no real safe protection, and of course, you will need Winword for using them. d. F/WIN can detect the Windows 95 virus called , as well as any future strains that use a similar infection scheme. e. F/WIN can detect known and unknown viruses that infect Windows EXE files which use the or infection scheme. f. F/WIN is inexpensive, especially when considering the protection that it provides. SHOULD I REPLACE MY EXISTING SCANNER WITH F/WIN? No. F/WIN is a specialized scanner that is intended to supplement the one you currently have. By now, there are more than 8500 known viruses for DOS, but only about 30 Windows specific viruses. You will need a normal DOS antivirus program, of course. However, it's likely that the number of Windows viruses will increase in the future. Around April 1996, we will introduce a new DOS heuristic antivirus program called SUSPICIOUS. It has been available in Germany for some time. Like F/WIN, the scanner is purely heuristic in nature, and is able to detect known, as well as unknown DOS viruses. Watch our web site for information as it becomes available. DOES F/WIN DETECT MACRO VIRUSES IN OTHER SOFTWARE LIKE AMIPRO, WORD PERFECT, ETC.? At this time it does not. That is a feature we hope to add to it at a future date. So far, F/WIN only detects macro viruses in Microsoft Word 6.0 and 7.0 documents. The only known non-Winword macro virus AmiPro.Green_Stripe isn't reported in the wild. HOW OFTEN WILL F/WIN BE UPDATED? Because of it's heuristic nature, F/WIN doesn't need regular updates like normal virus scanners. Normally, updates will be released to provide bug fixes and will appear at least every two months. Of course customers will be provided with a new version if they detect a virus which F/WIN missed. HOW WILL I RECEIVE UPGRADES? Because the FWIN.KEY is valid for every new version, you just need to download the shareware version from your local BBS or FTP/WWW site and replace the FWIN.EXE file! The latest shareware version of F/WIN is available at: http://www.entrepreneurs.net/fwin/index.htm (our temporary URL until the permanent one becomes active) http://www.fwin.com (our new URL sometime in mid-April , 1996) http://www.valleynet.com/~joe http://www.cyberbox.north.de (German site) The program is released as a ZIP archive and will have a file name like FWIN308E.ZIP (English version) and FWIN308G.ZIP (German version). HOW SAFE IS F/WIN? CAN IT DESTROY MY DOCUMENTS? The cleaning process has proven to be safe in our tests. But if for some reason it would damage your document, it makes a backup of it before attempting to remove the virus. The backup allows you to try a different method for cleaning or to recover the file if the cleaning process failed. Because F/WIN can't decode OLE2 objects like Microsoft Word documents with 100% accuracy, it's possible that it could destroy infected documents sometimes. If you encounter problems cleaning macro viruses, you could send us the files and we will clean them manually. Also, F/WIN has two options to clean documents. Both remove the virus reliable, but the second approach (Wipe macro names) needs less modifications and will work most likely in every case. HOW QUICKLY WILL I GET A REPLY TO QUESTIONS? As we both aren't full-time virus researchers, we can't always respond at once. We will check our accounts at least one time a day, so you will get answers within one or two days. We will do our best to get to you as quickly as possible. If you are e-mailing us about a current virus emergency, please put "VIRUS EMERGENCY" in the SUBJECT line of your e-mail message. Those messages will be given first priority.