What a week

It has been one heckuvu week here at my office working for a very large undisclosed company.

Some of you know what I do for my main job. For those who do not, I am an Info Security guy for a very large company. I work in the Antivirus Support realm of the protectorate.

I have been busy this week working on keeping the rest of us safe from gullible people.

There are emails that float around the Internet at large that tell people that they have special "e-cards" waiting for them. The messages say that either a family member, friend, or school mate has sent them a greeting card online. It then tells them that they can go to a website to view the card that is waiting for them. Once they get to the site they see a message saying "We are currently testing a new feature on this website. If you cannot see your card then click on the link that says "ECard.exe." The user then does that and gets infected with a virus.

These viruses are messy. They wreak havoc on people's computers. They cause network administrators to go into lock-down mode. They cause IT management to freak out.

A word to the wise- viruses are meant for the gullible.

Don't open messages or go to websites if-
You don't know who it is from
You don't recognize the sender's email address
The message doesn't specify exactly who sent it
You have to go to another website that prompts you to download anything
You are even remotely suspicious of the content

In addition to this warning, make sure that your computer security software is up to date and that you have some type of intrusion detection and antivirus software. Otherwise your computer could also become a host for the type of websites mentioned above.