• Do not open email attachments unless you know and trust the person who sent you the email message.
• Since some viruses have the ability to attach themselves to outgoing emails, you should be careful of opening ANY attachment, even if it is from a trusted source.   A good rule of thumb is: if the sender mentions in the body of the message that there is an attachment, and you trust the sender, you are probably OK.   If there is no mention of an attachment in the body of the message, you shouldn't open it.
• Be sure to read your messages thoroughly - some virus emails will have a subject line saying something like: "Here's the picture you asked me to send you" or something similar.   It may even look like it comes from a trusted source.   Try to keep in mind the people who you've asked to send you things.   If you didn't ask for it, don't open it - even if the email says you asked for it.
• Some viruses will try to trick you into activating them by sending you an email that states a previous message you tried to send has failed.   Messages of this type will usually give you the name of the recipient that the delivery failed on and provide you with an attachment so you can read the "failed" message.   Keep in mind who you've actually tried to send emails to.   Check the Sent Items folder in your email client to make sure you actually sent the message.
• Be very wary of attachments with filenames that end in these extensions: .scr, .pif, .com, .exe, and .bat.

Recently, you may have received email(s) that have the following in the body of the message:

• "The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment."

• "The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment."

• "Mail transaction failed. Partial message is available."

These messages probably arrived with attachments.   These attachments contain the "MyDoom" virus - but your computer won't be infected unless you open the attachment.

The reason that you'd be getting these emails is because somebody who has you in their address book got the virus on their computer - the virus automatically starts trying to distribute itself to everyone in that address book.   Whenever the virus sends out an email from an infected computer, it tries to disguise itself by making the email appear as if it came from a randomly selected name in that address book.   As a result, you may receive automated messages from various email servers that are telling you that messages you tried to send have failed - even though you never really sent these messages.

If you ever have doubts about the validity of a particular message or attachment, please feel free to contact Technology Support Services for assistance.