Are Virus Checkers Good For Catching Email Viruses?

The answer is obviously yes but not without reservations.  We cannot let automation do all of the work for us and virus checkers does not replace common sense when it comes to email viruses.

It seems that every week email viruses get more prolific as time goes on and that there seems nothing that we can do about it.  We rely heavily upon the antivirus software that we purchased to ferret out these viruses whether they exist in email or not.  But there is a caveat here that we need to be aware of.Virus checkers does not preclude the user, that’s you, from opening an email with a link to malicious script that will start a virus into your system.  If that happens then you better hope that you have the latest patches that address the possible inclusion of malicious script within your system.

But hey that’s only one scenario.  You could avoid the whole issue by not opening up the link within the email unless you absolutely know where the email came from.

Let me digress for a moment about email in general.  In the past, long time ago, there was occasion where you could get virus infected just by opening up emails without even clicking on the links.  Well everyone has gotten smart to this technique and we are pretty well protected against those kind of attacks.

We can feel assured that we cannot get an email virus just by opening it up and see what it says.  But there is no virus checker that can stop us from clicking on links within a suspicious email that may contain a virus.  We have to use common sense in this aspect.

So here are some basic guidelines that we can surpass the most expensive virus checker.

Be up to date with the latest patches from your antivirus software.

Run scans on a regular basis.  Daily, weekly or monthly is fine as long as it is a regularly schedule event that you perform.

Don’t even attempt to read the email that states that you’ve won the lottery in the U.K.  If you can’t remember that you purchased one then you probably didn’t.