Attorney General warns of e-card virus

North Carolina’s attorney general is warning computer users not to fall victim to e-mail greeting card scams. They can lead to identity theft and possibly disable your computer.

It looks like a legitimate e-mail in your inbox — an e-mail greeting card. But watch out. Opening up the attachment can open you up to the possibility of a nasty computer virus.

Best Buy computer expert Rusty Tilghman said, “Any e-mail that has an attachment of .exe, just don’t open it. That’s a program that will run on your computer.”

Computer experts say this virus is so new, most anti-virus software programs have not come up with a fix yet. That means the e-mail attachment can actually disable your anti-virus software and eventually disable your computer.

So how do you know if you’ve gotten a real e-card? Most legitimate e-cards require senders to insert their name – so don’t open one claiming to be from simply a “friend” or “neighbor.”

Set up a spam filter to reduce the number of potentially dangerous e-mail coming your way. And just as a precaution, be prepared.

“Always make sure you do a data backup. It’s always recommended you do that for important stuff once a month,” Tilghman said.

Bottom line — if you think you’ve gotten an e-card that looks suspicious, the best thing to do is dump it in the trash.

Computer experts say if you have opened the e-card and think you have a virus, don’t do a system restore. That will only make the problem worse. Instead you should take your computer to a tech support specialist.