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Technology
Info, Tips, FAQs Virus Information Virus Attachments - Email
There's a great deal of misinformation and myths about email and viruses, and hopefully I can clear a few of them up for you. It is possible to infect your computer simply by opening an email, but it's unlikely. Called Trojan viruses, these self-starting viruses are very sophisticated and complicated. They're hard to make and as a result, rather rare. The best defense against them is an up-to-date virus program. By far the most common viral infections come from opening email attachments, and that's the type of virus I'm going to focus on today. Attachment viruses are just that, attachments to email. They generally spread by accessing address books and automatically emailing copies of the virus out to everyone on the email list. The only way to infect your computer with this type of virus is to open the attachment by double-clicking it open with your mouse button. The attachment may take many forms. Usually it's an .EXE file (executable file) -- a sure sign that the attachment contains some sort of program. Any .exe file that appears as an email attachment should be viewed with suspicion. If you don't know who sent it, it's safest to simply delete the email. If you know the source of the email, you might want to quickly email them to confirm that they did, in fact, send a file attachment to you. When in doubt, don't open the attachment! .EXE files aren't the only file attachments to be cautious with. Word, Excel and other such programs have become increasingly complicated over the years, and often contain macros (commands that do certain things in the document, such as animating an image). A macro is, in effect, a tiny program, and so it's possible to slip viruses into document files. Again, the best defense is caution -- never open an attachment you didn't expect to get. There's a lot of unnecessary paranoia about viral attachments. The main thing to remember is that you can delete the email without opening the attachment. Combine this knowledge with an up-to-date viral detection program, and you shouldn't have too much to worry about.
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