You may have seen recent email containing a greeting card from a family member, or an email with a ZIP file from a long-lost customer. In most cases, this is an attempt to send you spam, capture your email address or infect you with a virus. Most of the messages look convincing enough and are often hard to resist opening. DON'T!
You really need to ask yourself, is it worth losing data on your HDD or worse getting it hacked- just to view a greeting card? Most viruses don't immediately infect your computer (Trojan). In fact, they sit there until a hacker scans your computer or you take some action (like opening the file) to start it's malicious activities. You might not notice for a long time there is a problem.
At EPhost we have recently implemented some new spam filters to try to prevent these messages from reaching your inbox. Not all email providers (especially free mail providers) provide such filtering, so as always NEVER open an email, PDF or ZIP file from someone you don't know. We do suggest you check your Junk Email folder online to ensure no legitimate email was caught by the new filter. If so, just click "Not Spam". See: http://mail.ephost.com
Here's what to look out for:
In all cases, the message body of one of these emails, is generally odd or confusing in one way or another. You may notice odd text in the message.. like a passage from a book. This is meant to try to throw off the spam scanners.
1) Greeting Card Spam: Is it your birthday or anniversary? Do you know the person sending you the message?
2) ZIP Files: Do you know the person sending you the message? Were you expecting the message?
Please note, we do allow ZIP files to be send through our mail servers but we don't allow EZIP for your protection. Please see "Banned Extensions": http://www.ephost.com/support/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=42
Here's what not to do...
1) Open the message because you think your anti-virus or ours, must have scanned and "okayed" the message.
2) Think "It won't happen to me".
Trust your intuition...
