Millions hit by computer virus

200motels

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-193396/Millions-hit-virus.html

TimeToShine

Am I reading that right - You have to open an attachment from a pretty much unknown sender to get infected?

Baked.noodle

It could be somebody you know that got infected and it subsequently infects you, then your contacts and their contacts etc.

Mr. G

I would imagine you have to open the attachment before it can infect you?

I understand it's possible to infect a computer without having to run an application, but recently I asked my mother about an .exe file and what it was. I said if you receive a document called CV.exe would you open it? Probably. Of course her email gets scanned at the mail server and on her computer anyway but many computer illiterate users don't know the difference between an exe and a docx/pdf file.

At my email server, all content gets scanned at mx level, then server level, then at client level so any infected file hasn't a hope of getting through. All .exe, .scp etc files are blocked by default. Of course an antivirus software cannot 100% guarantee you free of viruses but it can sure help. All outbound mail is scanned also.

It's worth noting here to those that don't know that your computer can send email to anyone without an email address or mail client. This is how spam works. Your computer turns into a massive mail smtp server and sends spam to lists of email addresses found in a particular list which it downloads. It can also spread viruses and many ISPs find it difficult to control at this stage.

Scary stuff but if people cared more about security it wouldn't be as much of a problem.

The main thing is to be careful when online I suppose. The same as you always cover your hand and quickly check for unusual devices on the top of an ATM

moc moc a moc

Mr. G wrote: »

any infected file hasn't a hope of getting through
...
Of course an antivirus software cannot 100% guarantee you free of viruses

So which is it?