SWE Virus Statement

E-mail viruses, worms and trojan horses, as well as fraudulent e-mails are a significant concern to all of us who rely on e-mail for communication. Recent strains of viruses are becoming more sophisticated, both in terms of how they deliver their viruses, worms, etc.. and in how they disguise themselves as legitimate e-mail. To that end, please be aware of the following:

1. SWE will NEVER e-mail you a FILE ATTACHMENT and tell you that you must click on it to maintain, update, or activate your "account", your e-mail, etc… If you receive an e-mail that looks like it's from SWE with a message such as this and a file attachment, IT IS A VIRUS AND YOU SHOULD IMMEDIATELY DELETE THE E-MAIL WITHOUT CLICKING ON THE FILE.

2. All e-mail sent to swe.org addresses that have .zip file attachments will be rejected and will not be delivered to the recipient. Because many new viruses are using the zip file attachment to propagate, we will no longer allow zip files through our mail system. Please send files in native formats such .doc, .xls or .pdf. If you must send a zip file, rename the file extension to .xip and notify the recipient that he or she will need to rename the extension back to .zip prior to attempting to open the file.

3. Never assume that because you know the sender, an e-mail and/or file attachment is safe from viruses. Mass mailing viruses often work like this:
   
   Jane opens an infected attachment in an e-mail and her machine becomes infected. This turns Jane's machine into an e-mail broadcast server - the virus goes through Jane's address book, and in latest virus versions, subdirectories on her harddrive and network connections. The virus picks out anything that looks like an e-mail address and generates new copies of the infected e-mail which are sent from Jane's computer. Hundreds of emails can be sent per minute and appear as if they were correspondence between ANY two people listed in the Jane's address book. So if both Sue and Diane are listed in Jane's address book, the infected email may show up in Sue's box as an email from Diane, or it may show up in Diane's box as an email from Sue, or it may show up in Sue's box as an email from Jane, etc….
   
   As an aside, assume for the moment that Diane has good virus protection and received the infected e-mail generated by Jane but showing Sue's e-mail address as the sender. It is Sue, not Jane who may receive notification that she sent an infected email, even though Jane's machine is really the culprit.

4. Fraudulent e-mails, also known as spoofing, imposter, or phishing e-mails, are e-mails in which the sender address has been forged so it looks like a legitimate e-mail from a particular organization (such as SWE). These are usually designed to trick you into providing sensitive personal information that can be used for identity theft by having you reply to the e-mail or by sending you to web site link that requests you enter information. It's sometimes hard to detect a fraudulent e-mail. That's because the e-mail address of the sender often seems genuine (such as This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ), as do the design or graphics. To protect yourself, be aware that SWE will never ask you to e-mail your credit card number or sensitive personal information such as your social security number. All credit card transactions with Headquarters should be done via our secure server, via phone, or via fax.
   
   To further protect yourself from viruses, be sure your computer is running a local virus scanning program and that virus definition files are regularly updated at least once per week. Never open an attachment directly from an email. Always save the attachment to your harddrive or the network first (depending on your organzation's recommendations), then open the file from there. Virus scanning software will not always recognize an infected file as accurately when opened directly in email.
   
   Lastly, never attempt to open a file that looks suspicious, comes from a completely unknown sender without explanation, or comes from a known sender without explanation. If you're not expecting a file from Jane and you get a message that reads "Here's the file we talked about", assume it's a virus. Contact Jane FIRST to see whether she really sent you a file.