The Metcalfe Society - Virus Alerts
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There are some nasty viruses going around at the moment, a
couple of which have been forwarded to the Society via it's members' email
correspondence.
However, they can be easily identified and stopped before doing
any damage by following a few simple steps :
- Emails containing a virus have usually been generated by the virus
themselves, and the first clue is that the subject line of the email is
something general like "Lose Weight Now", "I saw this and
thought of you" or "Let me know what you think". You can usually
spot them straight away as they look like 'spam'.
- Secondly, the actual body of the email may either be blank, or say
something like "Open this file and tell me what you think".
- Thirdly, and most importantly, they will come with an attachment, which if
you click on the email will immediately open a pop-up window to download a file
with a typical extension of (but not limited to) : .mp3, .scr, .pif. IF
THIS HAPPENS TO YOU, DO NOT OPEN THE EMAIL OR CLICK "YES" TO DOWNLOAD
THE FILE - this is the virus trying to get into your system.
To stop the virus infecting your machine and others :
- Make a note of who sent you the email, then delete it WITHOUT
OPENING IT OR ATTEMPING TO DOWNLOAD THE ATTACHMENT. Click cancel
immediately if the pop-up window appears.
- Send an email to the originator of the message to let them know that their
machine is infected to try and halt them sending it to anyone else.
- Invest in a good virus protection software if possible - such as Norton
Antivirus - which will scan and delete all future infected emails before they
get into your machine.
- If you think your computer has been affected by a virus, you can check out
the Symantec web site at http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/, which has details on latest
virus alerts and removal instructions/fixes.