Despite our knowledge of the e-mailed virus and malware, e-mail is still one
of the most prominent ways of infection.
A new feature slowly being rolled out to Gmail users should help make this dubious practice a little more noticeable. The update recently pushed out to web mail and Android users will attempt to authenticate the sender of any new e-mails. If Gmail is not able to verify the e-mail address it will place a large ‘?’ next to the name of the sender (seen in the image above.)
While this feature is not going to prevent any infections itself it should help users be a bit more aware of clicking any links or opening any attachments from unknown senders. Many ‘hacker’s that send these will ‘spoof’ somebody else’s e-mail so it may APPEAR to come from a friend, or even a reputable company such as UPS. Hopefully this should be a much larger hint to users that the e-mail should be taken with suspicion.
Along with the added sender verification Gmail is also added a prompt that will appear when attempt to click malicious web links received in Gmail. Now, none of these are going to 100% prevent any attacks, these are simply red flags that should help you recognize potential threats. And of course this is not going to flag every suspicious email and every suspicious link but hopefully this extra level of security will help users be more aware.
But, as always, if an infection did slip by you and infected your system Frankenstein Computers can resolve most infections within 48 hours with no loss of data and at a flat rate!
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