Email Best Practices

To avoid possible infection by viruses and Trojans you need to take certain preventative measures. Roughly 96% of all email is junk mail, most of this is spam but a significant proportion is malware (identity theft, infectious, spamming, denial of service attack).

• Never open email attachments without virus scanning it first and only then if you are confident you know what the attachment contains.
• Permanently delete all suspicious email, if it was important the sender can always re-send.
• Never forward on email virus warnings to others
• Keep you virus definitions updated, at least once a day.
• Keep your system patched. If you can't update your computer because of a 'system error' you are more than likely seriously infected and you should unplug it from the Internet and get it fixed before you do further damage to others
• Monitor your outgoing bandwidth, you could be spamming or your computer is being used as part of a co-ordinated attack against other computers and web sites
• Never follow unsolicited instructions from anyone not without first verifying their intent and authority
• Keep yourself informed about industry developments, Sophos is a good source of information