What are the 5 risk of opening a email?

Answer 1

There are many common risks when you receive or open attachments. email attachments represent useful information and documents. But they could also contain binary attachments like executable files. This type of emails attachment can be dangerous because they may be worms, Trojans or other viruses which can infect your computer and maybe could also hack your network and computer system causing you to lose your bank account numbers and your personal information, computer operators, but the most important factor which affects business people is loss of data.

The best ways of knowing when to open an attachment, is to:

· See if the person who you received the email is from someone you know

· Have you received email from this sender before

· Where you expecting email form this person

· Was the subject relevant to any of your needs

· Viruses - check if the attachment contained any harmful viruses. Install a antivirus like MacAfee, Norton or Kapersky etc.

Unsafe attachments include:

· .EXE - is the common extension for executable files

· .INF - is a plain text file used by Microsoft Windows for installation of software and drives.

· .INK - contains colour information related to a specific image file. (saved in a standard format)

· .REG - represents text files that can be imported to change settings in this storage.

· .SCR - windows screensaver. It will auto launch as the computer is inactive for several minutes. SCR files is most likely to display vector, text animations and slide shows

· .VBS - short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition. It can access into the file when it is currently on use.

These files are more likely to include viruses.

Safe attachments include:

· .GIF - short for Graphics Interchange Format.

· .JPEG - is a common image format, it is named after Joint Photographic Experts Group. This type of file format is very useful for the use of images in web applications.

· .WAV - short for Waveform audio format, also known as Audio for Windows. It is a file format useful for storing audio files in your PC.