Last week I warned you about receiving fake emails whose goal is to get your financial credentials online. I received a couple of emails from readers telling me about some of the horrors they have experienced from doing just what I described. I’m sorry I didn’t get this info to you sooner. But today I have another warning for you about something that is once again abounding on the internet.
These emails started running rampant about two months ago. They are from some not-well-known online greeting card company. They also make you feel very comfortable, telling you that a family member left you a greeting card and you need to go retrieve it from the internet. Now note that there are reputable sites that do greeting cards online that your family may send you. The Hallmark and Dayspring online e-cards companies come to mind and both are reputable
Please make sure you regularly update your anti-virus accounts since these and millions of other viruses spread through email. Mine, Avast! worked perfectly as it caught the four that I received within a 10 minute period. It identified them as Trojans. Of course, receiving that many emails from an anonymous family member should be a tip off, too.
If your anti-virus software doesn’t catch them you may be able to spot them another way. Attachments to these files often end with a “.shs” extension. This file type is commonly associated with Trojan horse files. They could also end with “.exe” but basically they can be any file type that is an executable file. If you use a preview window of your emails you could already have a Trojan from the email. They are not pretty.
Trojan horse files operate exactly like their namesake. They appear to be happy little files incapable of anything but they can be loaded with devastating contents. Most of them will automatically install themselves on your computer and will run in the background without you being conscious of it.
They most commonly collect usernames and passwords or scan computer drives for sensitive documents. Once they have this information they will forward the data to the sender of the infected e-mail. These are nasty and need to be avoided at all costs.
As I mentioned above I use “Avast!” anti-virus software and find it to be very effective. And the price is good too, free. But whatever anti-virus application you use, whether free or costly, you must make sure that it, and your windows system are updated often.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 6:26 am and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
