SAN FRANCISCO ― One basic rule of the internet is that you should never open an email attachment unless you’re sure it’s not a corrupt or infected file. And there are a few basic steps you can follow to avoid falling into this kind of trap.
First of all, never open unexpected or unsolicited attachments, especially if they come from unknown contacts.
Clicking on a corrupt attachment — which can take the form of an image, video, text file or spreadsheet — can unwittingly launch malware on your device, with the risk of compromising the data it contains.
Before opening it, you need to make sure that the attachment you’ve received is perfectly safe.
To do this, start by checking the sender’s identity, ie, that their email address is legit. Obviously, don’t open attachments marked as spam, and use antivirus software — if you have it — to scan every file that arrives in your inbox.
Once you’re sure the file is OK, you can probably go ahead and open files in widely-used formats like JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIF, MPEG, MP3, MP4, etc. On the other hand, avoid clicking on risky formats such as ZIP, RAR, HTML, and especially EXE, which is designed to launch a computer program.
If, despite these precautions, you still click on a dangerous attachment, immediately disconnect yourself from the local network and change your email password as quickly as possible, remembering to activate multifactor authentication. Finally, run a full antivirus scan of your device.
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