E-Mail Viruses

I'm constantly amazed at how normally intelligent people can turn into complete fools when they sit down at a computer. It is as if people expect the PC to do all of the thinking for them. For instance, if you are using the computer, and a dialog box appears with a message that something didn't work, and it only has the option to click OK, DON'T CALL ME! Just click the OK button. It's not like I'm going to tell you to do something different. And if you are using a program, and it comes up with a message that says you need to register it, DON'T CALL ME! The answer is, YOU NEED TO REGISTER YOUR SOFTWARE. Just like the message says. A lot of times, the things that I get calls for are problems that, if the user just thought about it for a second, the answer would be obvious. But people tend to get all panicky with computers. They are new, and smart, and powerful, and dangerous. People tend to think, "If I click the wrong thing, I could wipe out the entire machine! I don't want to break it!" So I get a call. Hmph. I got touched off on this rant by an e-mail I received today. It was the jdbgmgr.exe hoax virus. One of my relatives received this message saying that if this legitimate windows file is on your computer, you have a virus. It also said to send an e-mail to some random person at Dell, and to tell everyone in your contact list that they may have it too. The message is the real virus. All it takes is for someone to do a google search on the filename to find out it is a hoax. Also, today, I received an e-mail that DID contain a virus. It looked like a message from Microsoft with a patch, but it was from some garbled up e-mail address. So here are my quick tips for everyone to determine if you should really open that file.

• Who is the e-mail from? Look in the address bar. Do you know the sender? If not, don't open the attachment.
  
• Does the e-mail have an attachment? If not, then there probably is no virus. If it is asking you to do something to your PC, don't do it. Lookup the subject of the message on Google. Chances are it is a hoax.
  
• No company can track who you forward a chain letter to!!! I don't know how many times I've seen the hoax that says that such-and-such company will donate $$$ to charity for each time a message gets forwarded. These are ALWAYS hoaxes.
  
• Did you get an attachment from someone you know? Does the text in the message sound like that person? Do you normally get stuff from this person? You may want to reply to the message before opening that attachment.
  
• Finally, if your only option is to click OK, go ahead and click OK.