Email Security

We all heard of them, Viruses. Also known as Malicious Software, these are spreading all around the world, and they just keep getting more advanced.

I have taken many courses in “Computer Security” and have quite a knowledge of computer vulnerabilities. In this document I will be explaining the types of viruses, how they are transmitted through email, and how to avoid them.

You get an email from someone you know, someone you trust, the subject is “Take a look at this!” you open it and go to the website that the “sender” provided, and viola you could be infected.

Sound crazy but keep reading. Their are viruses called “Worms” and what these do is they automatically send emails to your contacts spreading the virus.

So it works like this, you get a worm and it automatically sends the worm to your contacts, then the worm goes through the other persons contacts and sends it to their contacts, and then its just a never ending cycle and the virus stays alive and goes throughout the whole web.

Your probably wondering, how do I avoid this? Here are a few tips to avoid this.

1. No matter who sends you the link your best bet is to not open it. Read the link carefully if its something like “www.associatedcontent.com” its probably safe. If its something like “www.zz2mikes.t35.com” its probably an infected link. Yes thats right, you can get infected from just visiting a website. So in other words, don’t open unfamiliar links.
2. Emails have a great capability of attaching files! This is great for business and family’s to share things, but viruses can disguise themselves as “Pictures or Text Documents.” A text document such as “Rules.txt” could have a virus. So if you are requesting a text document ask if they could make it an rtf document, such as “Rules.rtf” RTF documents are much harder to inject viruses into. Also, never accept “.scr” documents. Windows addresses these as “Screen saver documents” but in reality these files execute as “.exe” files which could contain a virus.
3. Don’t rely on your anti virus. Files can be encrypted causing anti viruses to not be able to scan the file. Encrypting a file makes it “FUD” also known as “Fully Undetectable,” in other words, the file cannot be detected as a virus. So never rely on an anti virus.
4. This is probably the best tip. “Think before you click.” Simple as that. If you feel that clicking this “link or download” will infect your computer, don’t click it.

I hope this document will help you avoid infected emails in the future. I will be writing more security documents in the future.