Know Your File Types

One of the reasons folks get infected by viruses and Trojans is because they don't see a multiple extensions to the attachment. Here's the fix!

Lots of Trojans and Viruses come as seemingly innocent-looking attachments to emails - you might perhaps see an attachment called simply 'Readme' or 'tryme'. What you don't see are the possible extensions - '.exe' or '.bat.vbs' or whatever it may be.

The reason behind this is that many users accept a default of not seeing file extensions for known file types in Windows Explorer. The thing is, if that's the way your system is set up, you won't necessarily see the full file name (including extensions) in any program, either, and that includes your email program.

This is not a state of affairs that you need to have - you need to be able to see any (and all) file extensions on every file in your system in order to be a little more sure what it is, and to have all the clues you need in order to combat the script kiddies.

Here's what to do:

In any Explorer window, select View

Select 'Folder Options'

Find the setting 'Hide Extensions for Known File Types'

Make sure it's unchecked - THERE SHOULD BE NO TICK IN THE BOX!

Click OK to get back to where you were

That's all there is to it - you will now see the file extension for every file on your hard disk. Don't be phased by that, if you're not used to it - you'll soon get used to it, and you'll be all the safer for it.

David Dorn