1. Never open attachments that you did not expect to receive, even from people you know.
Usually, dangerous attachments come with filename extensions (last 3 letters after the period) of .scr, .pif, .exe.
2. Your ISP or Hosting company will never send you any attachments over email
to update or speed up your computer.
Updates to your software or operating system always comes as software downloads from their websites, NOT email attachments.
3. NEVER click on links found in spam messages. These usually just lead you to a blank page
and acts only as a lure to verify if an email address is active.
4. Lastly, just use plain old, low-tech, common sense.
Call up your friend to check if they really did send you an email message with an attachment.
If it's from a company you are subscribed to for a certain service, email their support group manually and ask them about the email message and if possible, forward the message to them.
Do not reply to the original email.
Keep yourself up to date with latest threats to your computer.
Visit the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) threat alert website:
http://www.us-cert.gov/
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