Popular Email Viruses and the Effect They Had on the Internet

There is really only once piece of advice in regard to email viruses and one way to stop email viruses - don't open attachments. That's the best technique for avoiding email viruses.

Computer viruses through email are normally of two types, Trojans and worms. And, unfortunately, there are also plenty of hoaxes floating around.

Trojan

A Trojan is a malicious computer program masquerading as legitimate software. Sometimes they are designed as games or image files. The idea is to trick the user into opening the attachment in order to activate the program. They depend on the victim to take an action so they can replicate and distribute themselves.

Worms

Worms, by their nature, are self-replicating. These small pieces of software use security holes and networks to propagate. A copy of the worm examines the network looking for given security holes. When it finds a hole, it copies itself to a new machine, and repeats the process. Essentially worms' exploits file transmission capabilities. They consume bandwidth and adversely effect networks.

Hoaxes

You should also be aware that many people find it amusing to send fake email viruses. Warnings of dire threats that will wipe out your hard drive or steal all your financial data are a favorite of these hoaxes. Email viruses are so prevalent, it's very easy to scare people with completely fabricated threats.

Any time you receive a warning of a virus threat, simply conduct a search for the name of the given virus - maybe even with the word "hoax" in your search phrase. It's very easy to detect hoaxes if you'll just take the few seconds needed to do the research.

I Need to Send and Receive Attachments. How Should I Protect Myself?

First of all, if you have your own domain, make sure that your web hosting provider have some kind of anti-virus enabled for you on their mail servers. Here is a list of cheap web hosts that all have great virus protection.Get into the habit of telling your correspondents in advance that you will be sending a file to them. Tell them what you are sending, the name of the file and its program type. For instance, "I will be sending a Word document to you entitled 'committee_report.'"

By the same token, if you receive an attachment from a correspondent you recognize, do not open the attachment until you have confirmed that the individual in question did send the file. Never open an attachment from an email address you don't recognize. And never - let's emphasize that again - never - open a file attachment with the extension .exe.

In addition to the common sense precautions you can take as a user of email, you should also have a good quality antivirus program like McAfee or Norton installed. Both contain automatic mechanisms to keep the virus definition, or DAT, files updated so the programs look for recent malicious code. There are people out there creating email viruses and their variants daily. Without updated software, your system is not protected.

Continue to : The Worms and Trojans Creating Email Viruses

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Popular Email Viruses and the Effect They Had on the Internet

Trojan

Worms

Hoaxes

I Need to Send and Receive Attachments. How Should I Protect Myself?

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