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Re: [SG] Warning about email attachments

On Sat, 2 May 1998, Plant Collector wrote:
>Every so often a warning goes out about viruses being attached to
>emails.  We get told not to worry about it.  Well, I beg to differ
>tonight.  My son just had over 80 viruses copied to his harddrive in
>seconds by a email attachment from a total stranger.  He opened it
>thinking it was legitimate.

One cannot get a computer virus just by reading email...the problem
arises, as you unfortunately discovered, when one opens up an attachment;
a virus infection results by running an 'executable' program, which is
what an attachment reader is.

The solution is to never accept, definitely never open, attachments from
strangers -- the best tact to take is to presume it contains a virus and
just trash it.

If you think it MAY contain something you'd like to see, then email the
sender stating that you never accept attachments, and could they please
resend the file as a full text file.

If you get an attachment from a sender you know, discretion is still the
better part of valor -- download the attachment to a floppy, and run a
virus scan on it before opening it...not foolproof, but better than
opening it directly onto your hard drive before running a scan on it.

Many times innocent people pass viruses unknowingly...it's better to be
safe than sorry, and never open email attachments.


>The screen read "Have a nice day" and then enough happened that he is
>now reformatting a 4 gigabyte harddrive.

A hard lesson to learn why one should always perform backups of one's
system on a timely schedule...and have a good, up-to-date virus scanner
installed.


>I would like everyone on these lists to make a practice of KNOWING the
>person who send you an .exe file attachment before risking opening it

And even then.  Most virus infections I've found have resulted from
someone innocently sharing a wordprocessing or spreadsheet file with a
friend or coworker...there are many viruses which attach themselves to
macros in these programs, and the person sharing the file is totally
unaware of their existence...

Bottom line is, NEVER open ANY executable attachment directly onto your
hard drive.

If the attachment comes from someone you know, ask them if they've
thoroughly checked it for viruses.  Even then, if it's something you feel
you absolutely MUST have, download the executable to a floppy instead of
your hard drive, and run a good, up-to-date virus scan on the executable.

And even if the virus scan doesn't come up with anything which seems to
be a virus, don't run the executable unless you've made a complete backup
of your hard drive.  Then run the executable at your own risk.


>and having this happen to you.  My son will be spending an all-niter
>redoing his computer and redoing 7 hours of work on a major science
>project due early this week.

Again, a sad lesson to learn that one should always backup one's
important files...a project due in the coming week SHOULD have been
backed up to a separate floppy for safe-keeping...


June  ;-)
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                            / \           --ahjt


                        Go fly a kite!  It's fun.
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