Misconceptions about viruses

Because of an article that the TOI put up in the papers about the Kamasutra virus (calling it a virus because the paper referred to it as a virus) to fill space, four friends called me up to ask if it was OK for them to surf the web. some guy in the article also said that the virus will be the most active on friday, which is today, so people thought they would not go online at all, just to be safe.
Now my Mother told me that people in her bank have been asked not to go online for three days.

1) Viruses are actually VERY rare, especially in the twenty first century. Viruses need a host file to propogate, worms can do this on their own. Kamasutra is a nickname given to the Nyxem-E worm, which has many aliases. Worms basically target computers over a network, as worms were designed in the first place to find idle computers over a network and assign them different tasks. Because of this, a worm can do much more than a virus.
2) When anyone says the Virus acivity will be at its peak on any particular day, the said Virus does not suddenly bloom and become particularly potent or anything. Its just that the maximum number of computers will be infected at that point of time. This means that the virus is predicted to spread to the most number of computers on that day. I started recieving the Kamasutra mails around six days ago, they slipped past the gmail filters and showed up in the inbox. Don't worrky gmail users, this no longer happens. In any case, Kamasutra mails have sexually promising headings, so avoid any such mail and you should be safe. (If you recieve mails with sexual content on a regular basis, don't download files with the ".pif" extension).
3) For the most part, surfing the web without downloading anything is a perectly safe activity.
4) When it comes to e-mails, there are so many worms flying around that it is necessary to always be safe. Do not explore the bulk, trash or spam folders for mails that are accidentaly put in there, do not download files with double attachments, and if you are sure that the mail will contain something that you don't need (like 'Nude pictures of American Sluts'), don't "just see" go to the next mail.
5) The KS worm inhibits p2p sharing, and the anti-virus software, so update your AVs before you get infected. AVG is free and safe for use.