Viruses and safe e-mail practices

  Hoax e-mail

Although there are many real viruses on the Internet, you should also beware of virus hoaxes. People who send you e-mail do not always have your best interests in mind. In fact, there are people out there who are up to no good. If a message sent to you requests you to call a telephone number, reveal personal information, or change settings on your computer, first check a hoax listing website rather than assume that the email is legitimate.

If you receive an e-mail notifying you that have been infected with a virus, DO NOT follow its instructions without first checking to see whether or not it is a hoax. You can check and verify many of these sort of things by either visiting the Urban Legends web site that is located at http://www.snopes.com/ or the Computer Incident Advisory Capability site at http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/.

If you have verified that you have received a virus hoax in e-mail, and if you know the person who sent it to you, notify him or her. Include one of the two links above. If you forwarded the hoax before learning that it is a hoax, notify those to whom you sent the message. Again, include the link so that they can verify it for themselves.

In addition, beware of sales pitches disguised as warnings about viruses, even if they don't appear in the list of known hoaxes. Unscrupulous Internet marketers will often pretend to be one of the best-known legitimate anti-virus companies; it is best not to respond at all to unsolicited e-mail.

  Virus e-mail

To prevent your computer from getting infected from a virus we recommend that you install and maintain an anti-virus program on your computer. There are many good choices, but three of the most popular are Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus, McAfee's Anti-Virus, and Trend Micro's PCcillin. You can look up virus information, learn more about the software and purchase their software at their web sites:

Symantec: http://www.symantec.com
McAfee: http://www.mcafee.com
Trend Micro: http://www.trendmicro.com

In addition, all three products are readily available at retail stores that carry anti-virus software.

Whatever virus protection software you select, be sure to register it quickly and make sure that you are set up to receive updates to your virus definition files on a regular basis. With new viruses being unleashed every day, it is vital to get these updates.

If you are a Windows user, we also recommend that you visit

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

and install the Critical Updates listed under Product Updates on at least a monthly, preferably a bi-weekly, basis to prevent viruses from using undiscovered flaws in your operating system software to invade your computer.

If you already have antivirus software installed and it is telling you that there is a virus in the e-mail and the anti-virus software prevents you from downloading it, you can use ETI's web-based e-mail interface to remove the message containing the virus from your mailbox. After doing this, you can collect your mail normally. The ETI Users Center can be found by typing http://users.eticomm.net/ into your browser's Address line. The center will ask for your username and password; once you have provided this information and logged in, follow the link at the top of the page to "E-Mail." Mark the message containing the virus for deletion by checking in the box for that message on the right, and clicking on the button at the bottom of the page that says "Delete Selected." When the page reloads, click on the link the says "Empty Trash."

If you would like to have your e-mail scanned for viruses both before you receive them and after you send them, and you are in need of a domain name or already have one, then you may want to open a Hosting Account with ETI. With a hosting account, e-mail is scanned on the server before it is processed. By having e-mail scanned on the server, most e-mail messages that contain viruses are prevented from being delivered to the end user.

  Attachments

Any e-mail message you receive which includes an attachment might cause problems for your computer. Therefore, whenever you receive an unexpected e-mail message containing an attachment, or you do not recognize the sender, do the following:

1. Don't touch the attachment. Don't open it, don't view it, don't save it to disk.
2. Contact the person who sent it to you and verify they actually sent it to you.
3. Ask them what the attachment specifically entails. If you are still not comfortable opening the attachment, contact the person you normally turn to if you have problems with your computer. If you're in an office, contact your Network Administrator. If you are at home, call ETI Customer Care. DO NOT send us a copy of the attachment; instead, describe it to us and then wait until we ask you for it.
4. If all else fails, send a message to Virus@SecurityAdvice.com describing the message you have received. You *can* send a copy of the attachment to this address. The message will be investigated and you will receive a message back from www.securityadvice.com with whatever information they can provide about it.

If you are going to send someone an e-mail message and include an attachment yourself, then do the following;

1. Before you send the message with the attachment, always send the recipient a message telling them you are about to send them an attachment & / or notify them by some other means. This will let them know to expect a message with an attachment from you.
2. Avoid sending messages with attachments that contain executable code (codes that run things), like Word documents with macros. Instead of sending them a .DOC file, send them a .RTF version. If your machine is already infected without your knowledge, this will help prevent you from embarrassment of being the source of infection of other people's machines. As part of our ongoing effort to fight this problem, ETI currently blocks file attachments with these extensions: VBS, BAT, SCR, and PIF.
3. Use an anti-virus product, but don't rely on it to completely protect you. Specifically scan any file you are going to include as an attachment in an e-mail before you send it to someone else. You may be sending someone a virus that has yet to be identified by your anti-virus vendor, so the vendor may not be able to tell it is a virus.

Always err on the side of using e-mail safely.

The problem of viruses on the Internet is not going away. You need to think of these practices the same way you think of locking your doors at night, or riding a bike on a busy street. There are safe ways to operate, and unsafe ways. Be smart, ask questions, and think before you click.