Virus Alerts and General Reminders

I take for granted the little tricks and scams I see on the Internet and move on with my day, but I wanted to send out a brief note to remind everyone what to look out for.

The below is some advice I received from our IT department at work and thought I'd pass it along.

1.) If you receive an email called' POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it!

2.) Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK,' regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer.
This emails intention is to trick you into clicking into a web site that (if you do not have a current xp service pack and/or anti-virus software you are vulnerable).

3.) The most common scam that I see that scares me is an e-mail that claims to be from your bank and looks like your on-line login screen. Banks will never send you an email for you to directly log into your on-line banking and the goal of this scam is to get your username and password.

4.) Same rules as always with e-mail – if you don’t know who sent it and it looks like junk mail – just delete it.


Solutions and Advice
My favorite anti-virus software for a home computer is a product called avg and you can download it for free at www.grisoft.com