Email is an important part of most people’s modern lives. However, not everyone knows that the security of e-mails depends not only on the complexity and uniqueness of the password to the account. In this article, we will talk about how to ensure the security of e-mail, and what type of security to choose.
Virus: how to avoid it?
Viruses are special programs in machine code or fragments of programs that can reproduce and spread to other programs without the user’s knowledge and consent by copying their code into files stored on the system.
Most viruses spread through self-replication when we open an application or program that contains them. Another common way is through e-mail or social network messengers. They can be disguised as funny pictures, greeting cards, audio or video files. They can also be hidden in downloaded from the Internet, illegal software, and other files or programs that you download. Any type of operating system can attack a virus. However, most often it affects Windows.
Viruses are disguised, so you may not notice that something is wrong. Here are some key indicators that your computer may be infected:
- The computer often stops responding or locks up frequently;
- There are some crashes and it reboots every few minutes;
- Applications and programs do not work correctly;
- You cannot open and access your disks;
- You cannot print normally;
- You notice unusual error messages;
- You see a distorted menu and dialog boxes.
Email security issues – real and potential
Email is the most popular channel of business communication, through which tens and hundreds of thousands of letters with important and often confidential information pass every day. Therefore, very often mail is exposed to various attacks.
Even the most cautious user can get viruses that attack his computer from the outside. Most often, this is done using special techniques that force you to open a file or connect a device, starting the process of infection. For example, fraudsters can organize the sending of spam to the victim’s e-mail account. The flow of e-mail messages is sometimes so powerful that attention and caution can be blunted. This is what the attackers are counting on. They attack millions of users with their emails with clearly malicious content.
Basic recommendations to protect mailboxes from online threats
To keep your mailbox safe from modern threats, it is necessary to provide:
- protect the content of the message during transmission
- checking the content of emails for links to malicious sites and spam
- authentication and authorization for secure access to accounts
- integrity and functionality of the mail program.
To avoid getting caught by scammers, do not open emails from unknown recipients with attachments and text documents. And if you have already opened such a letter, do not open the files, do not follow the link. It is better to delete such a letter.
Spam and infected messages containing malicious software are often spread through e-mail. Therefore, to protect mail from a large number of unsolicited and harmful e-mails, most mail servers have a “blacklist” of known spammers and phishing. You can also filter messages by attachment type or allow sending only from verified sources.