E-mai Virus

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OK. One slips past your fire wall, past your scanner, and past any other security controls you have in place. The pesky bugger is one of the types that picks up all the e-mail addresses in your address book, temp files, Internet temp files, and other files that may have e-mail addresses in them. It reports these e-mails back home and your spam content goes through the roof along with those not adequately protected in the aforementioned list.

You know they got it from you but the folks on the other end of the e-mails may not. Some of these may be your clients. What do you do?
 
Report to all on your list what happened, and to double check domains before opening any mail- as YOU should do. I have been online since before the worldwide web existed, and have NEVER been invaded by a virus. Why? Oh, I'm loaded up with anti-virus and security software, but that's not the reason.


1) I don't open e-mail from unrecognized sources.

2) I don't open attachments unless they are sent directly from recognized sources. I NEVER open forwarded attachments from ANYBODY,

3) I don't download crap I don't need, and I buy my software on hard media from the mfr, and screen THAT with my anti-virus before loading. If you must download, do it directly to a CD or external memory device, then screen it before loading.


4) I have three anti-virus progams and software to enable all three + anti-spyware to run simultaneusly ( the simultaneous software is custom work).

5) If you can run only one anti-virus program, the best commercial program is probably the least expensive. It's called E-Z Trust, it IS heuristic, and beats the heck out of Norton and McAfee. You can probably find it at your local Staples.
 
Oh yeah. If you have DSL/WiFi, DON'T leave the computer on standby. You're always connected, and hackers love that. If you use a phone modem, just pull the plug after using.
 
do they have anywhere you can plug in modems in the States sorry for the hijack . Oh to keep on track hope you dont have illicit pics of the birds and the bees.
 
jtnichol said:
what about yahoo beta? it allows you to preview the email in a pane below the sender/subject list above. Is that considered opening the email?
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Dunno about Yahoo but MailWasher does this. The free version is still available, by the way.

Joe is right on the money. You can't be too careful. Opening a virus or Trojan email in any email utility pane could nail you if you're not running a good security suite. The same would go if you were reviewing email at the server level. If you wish to keep gatecrashers out of your machine, use a router.

To address Tom's original query I'd do as Dan suggests and contact as many people as I possibly could via other means to let 'em know what happened. Emailing 'em may not get through due to spam blacklists and the fact that they got a baddie sent their way.
 
Mailwasher is the best! I bought a license for it a while back even though I now use Gmail pretty much exclusively.

There's positives & negatives to every mail system. I always recommend webmail with some place like Gmail so you can access outside account.

  • They got the best spam filter around, very little makes it to my inbox.
  • All your mail and contacts are stored on their server if you contract a virus that looks for email addresses on your computer the virus cannot get them because they aren't on your computer
  • Gmail won't let you get mail that has a virus. I've gotten a few to my webmaster address.. Gmail told me it blocked downloading it from my server.
  • You can access your mail from anywhere in the world.. On a business trip or your HD goes belly up you still got even thing all in one place.
  • You can download and send from yourcompany.com email addresses with Gmail's free pop fetching.
  • If you aren't comfortable with using a web interface gmail has free pop access to download into Outlook or Thunderbird. Now they got free IMAP access so you can move things around in your mail program and have it show in Gmail itself
  • You can buy email hosting from Gmail for yourdomain.com and not have to worry about MX and mail header problems.

With a strong password, I really believe webmail is the way to go. Instant 24/7 round the world access to all of your email. No worries about viruses and very little spam worries. You aren't tied down to your computer or if you have a hardware failure you don't have to worry about loosing all you mail.

Anyway Gmail isn't the only guy on the block BUT Gmail is the best, IMHO and everything is free, other services like Yahoo upsell for things like pop access. If anyone is interested in help setting up Gmail for multipule email addresses.. Let me know I'll write something up.

In other news: Now a days there is no excuse for getting a virus, really there never has been. Don't visit porn websites, don't open email attachments from people you don't know, don't click links in emails from people you don't know.

Mail clients are now smarter they don't display images or HTML unless you tell it to. That's a good security measure.
 
SoftJock Rick said:
That's the whole point Joe -- I want to always be connected.

No risks -- no rewards...
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I understand, as long as you find the risks acceptable. I have one computer for general use that's left like yours, but my business computer is secured.
 
i'll stay with what I do - I have over 40x accounts and still use Mailwasher 200% of the time
 
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