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Dealing with Email Viruses

The following are some suggestions for avoiding the pain of having your computer invaded by a virus. These are not guarantees, just some practical things you can do to help protect your system from getting hacked.

  1. NEVER open an email attachment when you receive one. First have a look at the name of the attachment (if it is .scr, .pif, .vb, .vbe, .vbs you can be quite sure it is a virus infected attachment). If it looks like a safe attachment, first save it to a temporary folder (such as C:/Windows/Temp) and ask the sender whether the attachment was intended to be sent to you before opening it. Watch out with .exe files. These can be, but are not necessarily, viruses.

  2. Verify whether the email address of the recipient is correct (many of the latest viruses add an _ (underscore) in front of the email address, e.g. _patrick@somedomain.com . If you suspect the address to be different than normal or you receive an email from someone you don not know, DO NOT open the email but delete it straight away and empty your deleted items folder!. Again, ask the sender whether the attachment was OK and intended to be sent to you and if so, whether they can send you the file again.

  3. Look at the header. Many virus infected emails start with sentences that are normally not the language your friends use (e.g. an English header while you both speak Dutch) or strange symbols (e.g. $!@%* as subject)

  4. If you use Microsoft Outlook, add a new address called !0000 to your address book but do not supply an email address to it. A self-sending virus will send itself in alphabetical order and since the first listing in your address book is !0000, and has no email address, you will get an error message saying that the email cannot be sent. You will then know that a virus tried to send itself through your system and that you are infected. At least you avoided spreading the virus on to others in your address book. Unfortunately, you still need to clean your computer with an anti-virus program before the matter is fully solved.

Microsoft Outlook

99% of all viruses are being sent through Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express. No reflection on Microsoft, it is just that these two programs are by far the most widely used email programs on our planet. Hackers find and exploit weaknesses in the programs in order to maximize the chaos they wish to inflict on us all. So please take the above-mentioned precautions if you use these programs.

Anti Virus Programs

The two most widely used anti virus programs are made by Norton and McAfee. By flipping a coin, and a shrug of my shoulders I selected and use the McAfee program. It works well. Any virus that comes into my PC is instantly detected by McAfee, which asks if I want to cleanse or delete the suspected virus. Most often I simply hit the delete button.

One very nice feature about the McAfee program are the daily updates. After all what good is an anti virus program that was written last month? [:) My system is set to check the McAfee web site every morning at 9:15 AM. If a new virus has been set loose on the Internet, McAfee knows about it and has an update to protect their customers systems. If updates are required, the program takes care of it without bothering me. Occasionally these updates require that the machine be rebooted. I gladly save any work in progress and go through the reboot process. With plenty of problems to worry about, I like having the McAfee program on my system.

Floppies, CDs and Downloaded Programs

If you insert floppies and CDs into your PC you open your system up to great risk. Generally, factory original programs from reputable companies are OK. However, borrowed programs from friends or from who know where off the Internet is just dangerous. Remember that your friend my not be as cautious as you are. If you must insert data into your system through floppies, CDs or off the Internet, find out what precautions are being taken, and run this data through your virus program before installing it on your system.

No Panic - Just Caution

Please do not hesitate to send this page to your friends, colleagues or family to not only protect them but also yourself.

Viruses are not a fairy tale, they are really out there and more than 90% of all PCs gets infected one day or the other. So if not you today, it can or will get you tomorrow.

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