Sending emails or electronic mails afford you with the convenience of easily sending messages to the recipients. While in the olden days, your letters will reach the recipients several days or weeks after you have mailed your letter, emails can do this job in minutes. It is therefore convenient to be sending messages through email.

However, this modernity is also a playground for crooks to harm you and your computer. The spread of viruses have become rampant that many companies fall victim to the spread of viruses. Computer virus can damage the programs in your computer, delete files, reformat your computer or at worse cause your computer systems to crash.

Some viruses are not very damaging but it may slowdown your computer because it uses large amount of memory. This will cause difficulty in working on your computer.

To avoid the damages that viruses may cause, find below two important things to consider.

Install and use anti-virus programs

Anti-virus programs are designed to block the damages that viruses may do to your computer. You may also check for anti-malware programs to ensure that malwares or malicious softwares will not enter your computer.

It may also be necessary that even if you have an anti-virus program installed, run this anti-virus programs periodically. Especially if you are experiencing slowdown in your computer system, run the antivirus program just to be sure.

Avoid downloading email attachments

Email attachments may carry with it computer viruses that may do harm to your computer. Mere opening of malicious attachments will cause the virus to run amuck in your computer system.

Before you open an email with attachment, think of the following:

Do you know the sender?
Have you received an email from the sender?
Are you expecting an email from the sender?
Analyze the subject line and the sender; do you think it makes sense getting this email from the sender?

Spam mails are not only annoying, they may also be damaging. Thus, check emails even before you open them. If the email meets the requirements above, then may be you can open the email, however, even if you have received an email from the sender but this person is not entirely known to you, ensure that you run an anti-virus program to check the attachment.

Some experts advise that if the sender is entirely unknown to you and he is sending an email with attachment, immediately delete the message.

Thus, if it is your turn to send an email to a new contact, send an email without attachment first. Tell them who you are, why you are sending the email and ask if you can send them attachments. This is to ensure that your email will not end up in the recycle bin.

Being careful with sending and receiving email is a protection you and your computer needs. This is to avoid the damages including personal information stealth.