Increase in virus activity
Having tried several anti-virus packages over the years, I have settled with Avast!. It normally sits on my taskbar quietly monitoring things and I generally forget about it. The only time I remember it’s there is when I do a complete scan, or when it makes me jump with a loud advice that it has just updated itself.
Every couple of months, a banner flashes at the bottom of the screen to warn me that an infected mail has arrived. Sirens blare, and I have the opportunity to delete the mail, which I do.
Yesterday, it went off twice, which is very unusual. Normally I could expect five or six alerts in a full year, so two in one day was exceptional.
So far today, I have had nine infected mails. Yes – nine.
Is there a new flood of the damn things on the Internet?
Or have I just been chosen as the lucky recipient of this month’s batch?
Good choice.
I’ve been getting those alarms about infected emails with one of my local IMAP accounts I have loaded into Thunderbird 3. Seems to fluctuate in frequency from one month to the next. Infected email does seem to be on the rise lately.
The IMAP Gmail based accounts I also have loaded in Thunderbird stop that crap online so those don’t usually doesn’t reach the email client itself.
I have an old Oceanfree address which long ago ceased to be something from which I could send mail, but which I still put into the Church of Ireland Directory so circular stuff goes into it. It gets hundreds of items of spam every day and maybe two or three times every day Norton will say that an infected attachment has been removed.
I can’t remember the last time I got a virus in a mail. I guess that’s part of the joy of running your own mail server.
Incidentially, I have never had a virus on any of my windows PCs and haven’t bothered using antivirus software since my sister moved out! Most antivirus software is terrible anyway and not particularly good at detection and removal either. Whenever I get a PC or laptop to sort out do use MalwareBytes however.
Since I wrote this, I haven’t had a single alert. Weird? Maybe they read this site?
I have an old Clubi account (back from the days when all accounts had to be paid for!). I use that specifically for online forms that require email addresses. Needless to say it is stuffed with spam. No viruses though…
@Robert. You like living dangerously? I must say I have found Avast to be very good at the detection and removal/quarrantining of infections. It has saved my skin quite a few times.