Watch out for fake e-mail greeting cards that install viruses
Virus and Malware writers have become more creative in the ways they lure people to install their software. I’ve recently come across e-mails that lure the reader to view a “greeting card” with either an attachment or a link to a website that will install a virus on the computer.
This leads us to another important e-mail safety tip – don’t click links in e-mails unless you know and trust the website that the link points to. For example virus writers and people that try to coax personal and financial information from people will design ‘phishing’ web sites that initially look like a legitimate web site.
To see how this looks, the link in the box below initially looks like it will direct you to the ebay.com auction website. But if you hover your mouse over the link text you should notice text along the bottom bar of your e-mail client or web browser that shows where the link actually points to – which in my example will take you to Computer Techs’ contact information page.
If you click on the screen shot below you can clearly see an official looking e-mail I recently received. Notice how when I hovered my mouse over the link “Proceed to Account Update”, the status bar along the bottom of my web browser shows that the link does not point to a legitimate eBay web page.
