e-Greetings! You've got a virus

[Kalyan]

e-Greetings! You've got a virus

The festive season is the time to exchange greetings, but certainly not on the internet. IT experts believe that sending or receiving greetings through the Net could come at a price – it could cost you the data on your PC, as viruses could make a sweet landing with the greetings if one is caught off-guard.

Sameer Sharma, a professional is wary of opening any greetings on his e-mail, the reason being that he has lost some important data in the past. "Once I had received a very attractive looking greeting from an unknown mail ID, but as soon as I opened it, I realised that my system had been infected. I had a low-end antivirus software installed and I lost all my data, which included some precious and memorable photographs with my family and friends," he says.


source : economic times

[Kalyan]

Evidently, Sharma is not the only one. Poonam Singh, a senior faculty at a computer institute in the city had a nightmarish experience when she got a greeting on her e-mail account from her brother during Diwali last year. Her brother had sent it from a cyber cafe.

"Since it was a beautiful greeting, so I saved it in the D–drive of my system which also contained all my data including some projects. But because he had sent it from a common computer, the file was infected and when I rebooted my PC the next day, and even installed a superior anti-virus that deleted the infected files, I still found, to my horror, that all my projects which I had made over the years had gone," she says rather ruefully.

[Kalyan]

IT expert Sanjay Kala recently got a mail from a recruitment agency supposedly based in Delhi. "Since I had recently opened an institute, and not too many people know about it. I got suspicious when I saw the subject line as a congratulatory message for the institute's opening, so I deleted it from my system."

"Even while sending greetings from one's system, people should be cautious because while downloading images from the net, one can't be sure if a virus will pop up once you click on the image. One can unknowingly send an infected file in the form of a greeting. The best way therefore is to opt for e- cards from a trusted site," adds Kala, who is former secretary of the Computer Society of India.

[Kalyan]

But Gaurav Bansal, professor of administration and disaster management, Indian Railway Institute of Transport Management (IRITM ), says that certain precautions really help.

"One should never open unsolicited mails, even while opening a mail one should not double click instantly. Instead one should right click and go for the 'open' option since there is a possibility that the anti-virus would detect the virus that way. Also one should install a licensed anti-virus rather than downloading it. Then of course, the external hard disk should be used as a backup for storing the data, in case any data is lost because of a virus."

[pradeep prem]

thanks for share this message
from this we should be secure in e-greeting