Jason's Ramblings

Computing Safety

Just sent this e-mail off to everyone at work, thought that I would share it with everyone on here also.

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E-mail and Computer Safety

Here are some tips to help keep your e-mail and computer safe and secure at home and at work:

1. Get a lot of SPAM? Send a lot of forwards? The two are related.
   1. If you must send a forward delete all the previous e-mail addresses. SPAMers just love getting an e-mail full of nice juicy working e-mail addresses.
   2. Remember one other thing… Bill Gates isn’t going to give a thousand dollars by forwarding an e-mail, you won’t claim riches from a Nigerian prince, and your hamster won’t die if you don’t forward that e-mail to 15 people in 2.56 seconds.
   3. If you send a forward to numerous people, send it Bcc (blind carbon copy) this keeps all the recipients e-mail address secret.
2. Are you getting e-mail from yourself? If you didn’t e-mail yourself, don’t open it! This cannot be stressed enough.
3. Attachments – So, you just got an attachment and you want to open it up…first ask yourself a few questions:
   1. Do you know the person that sent it to you?
   2. Does the attachment have a unique name or is it simply “password.exe” or “WeeklyReport”. If it seems like a generic name e-mail, or better yet call the person that sent it to you to see what is going on. There are nasty little boogers out there called worms that take over people’s e-mail and send bad stuff to everyone in their address book…you open that attachment and everyone in your address book will now be bombarded by you.
   3. Is the attachment a file that ends in .exe ? If it is you probably don’t want to open it….this is a program and if you open it then it will run which could be very bad!
   4. Use common sense…don’t open an attachment that says “password” or something like that!
4. “Phishing” - So, your (bank, paypal, credit card, etc) company has just sent you an e-mail saying that they need to update your records. Guess what, it is not your (bank, paypal, credit card, etc). It is someone spoofing a legitimate e-mail address so that they can get your personal information to steal your identity, bank information, or credit card numbers. Remember the golden rule, if you don’t request it, ignore it. Oh, and you did read that correctly, you can really make an e-mail appear to be from someone else. If you are unsure call your (bank, paypal, credit card, etc) and clarify.
5. If something appears too good to be true, than it probably is. Be careful bidding on auctions or buying things from a store that has deals that are unbelievable.
6. Popups -
   1. The demise of many a computer! These are evil little buggers that just love to replicate, but there is some things you can do. First, never click IN a popup, always click the little X to the top right of the popup window.
   2. If you click the little box that says “Close Window” then you just clicked the popup…it’s the equivalent of leaving your car unlocked with a million dollars sitting on the drivers seat…you’ve just lost!
   3. If you have popups appearing for no reason then you probably have spyware. Get a reliable antispyware program and run it. I wish you luck…many of the current spyware programs out there will severely mess up your computer.
   4. If you have a popup that says something along the lines of “Your computer is infected with spyware, click here to get rid of it”. Please go back to 6b, it just wants to install spyware on your system!
7. Toolbars and other “helpful” programs
   1. Don’t go toolbar crazy…mywebsearch, hotbar, and many others are bad…they may infect your computer with more spyware.
   2. Don’t install anything from a popwindow!
   3. If you install a “free” program that you found, read the EULA (End User License Agreement) to see what it says. Many “free” programs make their money by getting paid to install spyware on your system.

Any other questions ask…ultimately just use common sense!