Keep Your PC Safe

Creators of malware (viruses, spyware and the like) are making more and more use of email greeting cards to spread their rogue activities to unsuspecting PC users. Look out for these tell-tale signs and follow these tips which can help you to avoid falling foul of their greeting card scams.

Be cautious if the greeting card shows any of these signs: 1) The card doesn’t address you by name; 2) The body of the email does not have the senders name; 3) The email isn’t from someone you recognise and lastly 4) it’s not a special day or time of year that may have inspired someone to send a card.

You may get a message that says a special viewer needs to be installed in order to view the card or it may immediately attempt to download a file. In either case, cancel the download immediately and scan your system with up-to-date antivirus software. In a typical greeting card scam you are tricked in to downloading a program they say is essential for viewing the card. Instead of a viewer however, you actually download a trojan. This trojan then downloads other malicious files on to your PC.

Even if you receive a card that purports to be from someone you know – don’t open it yet. Send that person an email, but make sure you don’t just hit ‘reply’ on the card email as the email address shown may be fake. Ask them if they’ve sent a card. If they reply that they have you can go ahead and open the card. If not then you know this is a greeting card scam and you should delete it.

Greeting card scams have two victims; the user who received the card and the greeting card company whose reputation and good name is being abused in order to trick the user in to the scam.

In common with all such attempts to infect your PC with malicious software a good security suite is essential to help keep your PC safe such as Kaspersky Internet Suite.

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