One thing we deal with in our office ALL. THE. TIME. is viruses. And not just viruses, repeated viruses from the SAME PEOPLE.
Almost 100% of the time our customer is verklemped as to how in the world did they get a virus when they have antivirus. And not only antivirus, but anti-virus that we, your IT company, provided to them.
Ok, here's the deal party people. It's flu season. So what do you do? You go and you get a flu shot. You eat all of your veggies and buy yourself some oranges. You get plenty of sleep and even make it to the gym. Are you going to be impervious to influenza? NOOOOO you are not. You go lick that toilet seat and no amount of multi-vitamins are going to save your intestine.
In other words: having an antivirus installed in you system is a good road block but it does not mean that you will 100% be immune to viruses. This is especially true if you are engaging in risky behavior.
Now don't be offended. Seemingly innocent acts can wreak havoc on your machine. We're not trying to say you're doing anything you shouldn't be doing, but we are saying be aware that you are not invincible.
Here are some ways that you can pick up a virus:
1. You get a pop up that says your computer is infected and you have to click the pop up for the fix. This pop up may even have the name of your anit-virus on it!
2. When you're installing new software and it prompts you to install secondary software. This is VERY common. Just say no to additional software!
3. Not running your operating systems updates. An out of date OS is more vulnerable to infection.
4. Being a pirate, and we don't mean the scurvy kind. Downloading software, music, movies, TV shows, books....you name it....and it is VERY risky.
5. Opening an infected email. THIS IS THE NUMBER ONE REASON WE GET INFECTED MACHINES IN THE OFFICE. You can have a spam blocker on your email and still get malicious emails. If it looks unfamiliar it probably isn't a good idea to click on that link. Like we showed you in a previous newsletter, hover your mouse, WITHOUT CLICKING, over any links and read the address that pops up. Look suspicious? It probably is. We can not stress this enough. Just because you have Outlook, with spam filter, and anti-virus does not mean that EVERY email in your inbox is safe. You still need to use your common sense. A customer recently called in with ANOTHER virus on two of their office machines. They clicked on the same email. The email was from UPS and claimed they tried to deliver a package and couldn't. It prompted them to click the link for delivery information. UPS doesn't email links like this. They will generally leave you a paper receipt with a tracking number. Just because you recognize the company doesn't mean it's real. Be VERY careful if it looks at all out of the ordinary. For instance: This paragraph is a link. Hover over it and read the address. It may show you the address in a pop up window or at the bottom of the window. It should say TVIT.net, and that's legitimate! But if it said something like: http://yourasucker.net/thisfolder/worms/spiderface....then its bad.
5(continued). Email attachments. Most email providers are set to download attachments automatically. You may want to block this and set up attachments to download upon approval. Some of our customers go a little too far in this department and block ALL attachments. This is not a good idea as any forms, invoices, bills, etc, will be sent to you this way and will now be sent directly to your spam or rejected all together. I get a lot of returned email when a customer asks for quote to be sent to them just for me to get a failure notice. I then have to ask them if they have attachments blocked which almost always leads to a service call from a technician to get them UN BLOCKED and that costs money.
6. Games. Free gaming sites can be loaded with bad ju-ju.
There are different types of infections as well, not just viruses.
Viruses: a virus is a small piece of software that piggy backs on real programs. Example: a virus might attach itself to a program or a spreadsheet. Each time the program or spread sheet runs the virus has a chance to reproduce.
E-mail: An e-mail virus travels as an attachment to email messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically emailing itself to dozens of people in the victims address book. Some viruses don't even require you to click, but rather will infect you by simply viewing the message.
Trojan Horse: this is a program. The program claims to do one thing, like a game, but instead damages your system when you run it.
Worms: A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks, like your office, and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of a worm scans networks for another machine that has a specific security hole. It then copies itself to the new machine within that security hole and starts the process over.
So just keep in mind that it happens to everyone and no one is 100% protected. Computing just doesn't work that way. Just keep diligent and be picky about what you click on and where you go!
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