Even the most mundane and harmless looking junk e-mails can contain viruses in them that can do serious harm to your privacy and your beloved computer!
It’s important to understand that even just looking at some malware infected e-mail is enough to install the virus onto your machine without you even realizing it has happened. Recently, a McKinney resident opened an infected email and brought their computer to us. We were able to clean it before damage ensued.
Your best course of action when faced with a potentially infected e-mail is to highlight it and immediately delete it.
The truth is, most businesses will not be sending you e-mails out of the blue unless you openly invited them to or have subscribed to be on their mailing list.
Most people know exactly who they are doing business with, so if rather suddenly you are receiving mysterious e-mails from people, even the ones that have your name in the subject line, at very least you can be assured that it is junk mail, if not malicious attempts to infect your computer.
Computer viruses can be transmitted in various fashions from your e-mail. For instance:
- Requesting you to click a hyperlink within the text of the e-mail that directs you to a bogus website designed to penetrate your web browser.
- Requesting you to enter personal information such as phone numbers, addresses or social security numbers.
- Giving you detailed instructions to make chances to the settings of your computer in order to make it vulnerable to attack.
- Offering phone numbers for you to call usually in the guise of preventing some form of issue, but actually attempting to rip you off or gain remote access to your computer.
These are but just a few ways for hackers or troublemakers to penetrate your security and cause you all sorts of headaches!
A good rule of thumb when dealing with unidentified e-mails is this:
- If you do not know who it is from,
- If they are asking for personal information, or
- You cannot think of a legitimate reason for them to contact you … delete it without even opening it.
If it is something important they will likely call and identify their company properly! What’s the craziest scam you’ve seen? Share it with us!