You have probably noticed that viruses are becoming increasingly clever in their attempts to infect your computer.

The recent rash of viruses are designed to confuse the reader into thinking the message comes from us, the admins at Cove, and trick you into opening an attachment containing a virus.

Our VirusCheck software does remove the virus, but the message still leaves the reader

mail technical support warning”, are signed with something like “The Management” or “The Cove.com Team” with a link to our web site and contain instructions (in poor English) to open the attached file.

You can tell these messages do not come from us since we always sign our mail with our names, we never include a link to our web site's homepage and we (usually) use better English than the creators of these viruses.

When we upgraded our WebMail program a few months ago, people began receiving a system message every time they used WebMail and then used the email program in their computer. This

created much confusion and prompted many calls to our tech support team.

We have since upgraded our POP server software to work better with WebMail

and preventing that system message from being downloaded along with the rest of your mail.

We are now processing over four times as much mail as we were just five months ago and all of that increase is due to spam and viruses.

Prior to the tidal wave of spam

and viruses, we only needed a single mail server for the number of subscribers we support, but now we maintain four mail servers to handle the load.

The amount of spam and the number of mail-generating viruses are both still increasing with no end in sight, so we are now planning to add yet another mail server to our inventory.

This new server can handle over 50 times our subscriber base, so hopefully it will keep up with the spammers for at least another year.

It was a busy month at the help desk!

Most calls were for setup information and instructions on how to receive email.

If you ever need help, please select tech support (Option 2) if you call our main office. This

will enable you to get our dialup access numbers, email settings or our toll-free help desk number.

Please remember, our help desk team is available to you 24 hours a day and the direct, toll free number is
877-221-2116.

This was a relatively quiet month on the network.

Our upstream providers reported no outages and our new dialup lines, modems and radius server continue to perform well.

We will be developing a new

TimeCheck interface this month so you can view the number of logins as well as the cumulative amount of time and traffic used each month.

We will also be developing and installing a new mail server, as described above.

Are you pleased with our service? Do you know someone who is unhappy with their current Internet or On-line service?

Why not do them and yourself a favor?

Just recommend our service. If they subscribe, we'll give you a free month of access!

They will appreciate your advice and you'll save a little money.

Again this month, over a dozen subscribers are getting their access in April for free - just by referring new subscribers.

Everybody wins!