THE BACKGROUND

• Originally E-Mail was a method for sending simple text across the Internet.
  

• The text was reduced to binary form (1's & 0's) prior to being sent.
  
•  Someone had the bright idea of sending raw data, programs and other digital information in place of the text.
  
• E-mail Readers displayed this raw data as text. (If you have ever opened an attachment directly in your E-mail Reader and it looked like gibberish. You probably got a text display of data. Not very useful was it?)

THE FIX

• E-mail was broken up into two types of data

  • The "message" which is text.
    
  • The "attachment" which is a stream of 1's & 0's.
• Your E-Mail Reader knows what to do with each:
  • The text is displayed in the E-Mail Reader.
    
  • The attachment can be saved in it's original form. You now have a copy of what was on the Sender's Computer.

THE WORRY

• Attachments can contain programs.
  

• Some data files can contain small programs.
  
• Some programs do bad things. (We're not sure which category Microsoft products go in :-)
  
• Some programs run automatically
  
• You can be tricked into running programs

THE DANGERS - E-Mail attachments that:

• Contain programs
  

• Do bad things
  
• Run automatically or trick you into running them.

THE RULES

• Delete E-mail you get from somebody you do not know.
  

• When in doubt delete the file.
  
• Never open an attachment that ends in ".exe"
  
• Never open an attachment that ends in ".dll"
  
• Do not open attachments until:
  • You have scanned them for viruses or
    
  • You are sure they are safe.
• To read an attachment
  • open the program and then load the attachment.
    
  • Don't just double click on the file.
    
  • If you get a warning about "Macros" or "Programs" do not open the file.
• When in doubt call on the phone and verify before opening it.
  
• Run a non-standard E-Mail Program.
  • This eliminates common Microsoft exploits*
    
  • It will allow a very low level encryption scheme.

NOTES

• The Internet is just like the rest of the world, most of the people out there are good but there are bad people. I have found it is no better and no worse. You lock your front door as a precaution and do not open it to strangers, you should do the same with your computer.

• Spoofing is just changing the return address on the E-Mail. It is easy to "spoof" an E-Mail return address. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to do this. In fact a lot of the E-mail I send is in essence "spoofed". It appears to come from my office, when in fact it may have been sent while I was traveling. This can lead to problems when computer crackers abuse this feature to send E-Mail so that it appears to come from a "friend". I can teach you how to do this in a little under 2 minutes.

• Microsoft (MS) Exploits. MS products are designed to work together. MS products are usually installed in the same place on most machines. They share programs and data. They assume that something coming from another MS product is OK. This leaves a computer open to viruses that pretend to be Microsoft programs. It also leaves the system open to programs that look for and read information off your computer since it will always be in the same place on MS computers.