In general, you must use common sense, good ethics and morals when you send an e-mail, which i.a. means that, for example, chain letters are not circulated.
Fake e-mails
You have inherited 14 million kroner.
It sounds too good to be true, and indeed it is. It is a creative attempt to lure money out of you. Eg. can an e-mail lure you with some confidential material if you want to confirm your identity:
”Hello Dear! I am Wilson Mann, Personal Assistant to late Mr. Robert Jensen. He gave me your name and contact information to contact you on something very confidential before his demise. I am contacting you based on what is presently on that capacity and want to be sure it is you I have contacted before details will be divulged.“
(Excerpt from the email)
You are then informed that you are the recipient of an inheritance of 14 million kroner. It can be very tempting to respond to such inquiries, but you shouldn’t.
If you receive such emails, you must:
delete the email
do not respond to the email
refrain from clicking on links in the e-mail
refrain from opening attachments
Attachments in e-mails
If an attachment is received, the best advice is:
Never double-click an attachment that is sent unsolicited. It is better to delete the email immediately if the sender is unknown and you have not asked for the file. Be especially careful if a file has strange or enticing names. This also applies if it comes from a known sender. If the sender is known or the email looks real, the attached file can be saved to the hard drive and then scanned with an antivirus program.
As a rule, you can see from the end of a file name which type of file it is. For example, Word documents end in .doc and JPEG images end in .jpg. Often, malicious programs try to trick people into thinking they are documents. This is done by creating a double ending, so that the file is called brev.doc.pif, for example.
The following extensions indicate that these are programs that start up if you double-click on the file: .bat, .vbs .cmd, .com, .exe, .pif and .scr.
Files with these extensions should therefore never be double-clicked if you are in the slightest doubt.
SPAM MAIL
Never respond to “spam mail”, (mail sent unsolicited to countless email addresses often from an “unrecognizable” sender address). There is an overwhelming probability of being bombarded with emails if you reply. For the same reason, you should never click on the link that promises to delete you from the mailing list. In both cases, the sender can see that the e-mail address exists and can receive e-mails. Always delete spam mail immediately.
If an email is received from someone other than the IT department warning of a threat in the form of a new worm, virus, etc., this email is sent to the superuser alone or deleted. It must not be sent out to colleagues. This regardless of whether the email was received from a trustworthy or known person. The email may be a so-called “Hoax”, the purpose of which is to create spam email by scaring users into forwarding the email as quickly as possible to as many people as possible.
A characteristic of a hoax is that the email will often say that it must be forwarded as soon as possible, a large part of the text will be written in capital letters. There are often many exclamation marks. It is unclear who the email originates from, for example it may say “Someone from IBM…, Someone from the Police…” but no name.
