Scenario 11: Mrs. Smith considers herself to be a
pretty savvy computer user. She has been working with computers for five years
and uses them regularly in class. Mrs. Smith gets an email from someone she
does not know but opens the email anyway. When she opens it, the message has
some advertisement for a free gift, so she deletes the email. Several days
later she is working on her computer and notices that her Internet browser is
working very slowly. She decides to check the computer with an antivirus
program and discovers that she has a virus on her computer. She determines that
the virus came from the email she received several days previously.
Mrs. Smith appears based on the facts of the article be a very capable
person in terms of technology use and digital know how. She used her digital
technology both appropriately and inappropriately for several reasons. She used
her email inappropriately because one should avoid opening emails from unknown
senders as they may often contain viruses. This article talks about the different kinds
of viruses that exist and how they can enter your computer. This website talks
about the Worm Virus that is very commonly spread through emails. However the
website does mention that in order for the virus to get into your computer you
need to click a link or open an attachment. In general opening up these kinds
of emails should not be a concern if you do not open links or attachments. Mrs.
Smith took very appropriate actions when she noticed that her Internet browser was
working slowly. Her use of the antivirus was correct as it lead her to
determine the source of the virus. This website describes very well what an
antivirus is and how it can help users detect viruses.
Mrs. Smith could have opened the unknown email but avoided opening any links or attachments from the unknown sender. Also she could have altogether not opened the email but instead try to find out who the sender is. There are also softwares like this one that can detect email viruses.
Mrs. Smith could have opened the unknown email but avoided opening any links or attachments from the unknown sender. Also she could have altogether not opened the email but instead try to find out who the sender is. There are also softwares like this one that can detect email viruses.
Emails can be very tricky at times to know whether they are genuine or not nowadays. It seems some people just have too much time. This is a tough one here, but I am going to say that she didn't really use technology inappropriately. She was just checking her emails. If anyone did anything wrong it was the person that sent the email to her.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to simply discard an email just because you don't know who the sender is, it could still be important. Of course you should always be cautious when opening emails from someone you don't recognize, but even ones you do recognize could have viruses too. It can be very difficult to differentiate them from the real important emails.
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ReplyDeleteHey Billy,
ReplyDeleteI find myself agreeing with Brady, I personally have viewed many emails that I did not know the sender of and they have on occasion been important. A big thing that Mrs Smith might want to do is find a more secure email provider. Even using outlook (outlook.com) for example, as you can see in the article below, Outlook has a preview pane that allows you to view emails without activating any of the script in the email, thus the malicious content is not activated. Something this simple can be significant in terms of security and does not require her to do anything.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/outlook-help/preview-messages-HP005242694.aspx
I totally agree with the guys, I think the key is to have great anti-virus protection that can detect scams such as the one Mrs. Smith found herself the victim of. Just recently, my sister's email was sending out spam to contacts on her list, so even people we know can unintentionally send us these emails.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with your assessment that she was using the technology appropriately, unfortunately for her, the situation just was extremely unusual and she fell victim to a scam. At the end of the day she will learn from the experience and be more cautious going forward.