E Mail Attachments- Do You Open Them?

I rarely open attachments.

I don't open attachments unless I'm expecting them. Usually its very easy to see whether a file is a virus by looking at the extension, file size, email message etc.

I feel the same way Phoenix. I rarely send out anything with an attachment and it doesn't thrill me to get them either. As you said, it's usually some kind of joke that someone sent me.

You do not need to open attachments to get a great many of the available viruses.

Your virus scan can be configured to scan the nested email messages.

So yeah, I open attachments. The ones I want are easy to recognize. Malicious ones are recognizable at a glance.

I get more pissed about nested emails than attachments.

Craven
What is a nested email?

Most of the time - same as CDK

Craven- Is a nested E Mail one where you click on it, only to find that you have to keep clicking back to the original message, which may be many messages away? If so, they drive me NUTS!




That is true, but I usually look at my E Mail, early in the morning, when I am not running on all cylanders. For instance, this morning, I wanted to delete today's E Mail. Half alseep, by mistake, I clicked "send" instead of "delete". I am not checking, and I really don't want to know, what got mailed to whom!

Once, half asleep, I clicked, and realized to my dismay, that I had unleashed a virus. Believe me, it never happened again!

an email with an attachment that contains another email that may have an attachment containing another email inside another email...
there have been times where i had to open 10 attachments to get to the actual message.

i open all attachments that aren't executables without scanning them. when openning office documents, my office programs inform me if it contains a macro. if it does i disable the macro before viewing. i have only gotten 1 virus through email though i have been sent others. and it was an executable which i stupidly ran without scanning it.

if you patch up your email programs with the latest updates, and scan any executables before running them, and make sure your office programs don't run macros without warning you first (which should be the default behavior anyway), i'd say you're at least 99% safe from viruses.

Thanks Ye110.

I must open (and send) attachments for work. No way not to. But I'm careful about those I open; they have to be from people I know in some way.

E mail attachments
I open attachments only from a very select few, emphasis on very, select, and few. In fact I can think of only 5 correspondents whose email attachments I would even consider opening.

BTW - Iv'e never quite understood how you scan an email/attachment without opening the thing. It's undoubtedly something very elementary that I should have known long ago, but there it is - I don't. Can someone explain - nice and simply, of course...

Thanks.

At work, i only open attachments i'm expecting. If i'm not expecting one, and i recognize the sender, i'll call to ask if they have intentionally sent me an e-mail with an attachment.

At home, i only look at attachments which come from either one of two people . . . everybody else be damned . . .

I should probably also add that at home, or when checking my personal mail while at work, i automatically delete any message for which i do not recognize the source . . .

So do I. I did email an abuzz and didn't recognize the responding address, but she politely gave me the context in the subject line. I opened that one.