Reply To: Warning: A very sneaky and effective virus that steals online banking info.

derszoger-

“YW Moderator-42” doesn’t give himself enough credit – his answer is correct and well-explained.

The way almost every type of virus works is that it tricks you or your computer into running something that shouldn’t be run. This can be thru scripting, tricking you into downloading and running something, or many other ways.

Since there are several programs that can legitimately be needed to run in order to display a document, play a song, view a video and so on, if the “bad guys” find a vulnerability in one of those programs, they can exploit it to gain access to your PC.

“And if so, how can people accept or read e-mails from people they don’t know?“

I don’t have a good answer for you. Generally, I don’t open emails that look suspicious.

This includes unsolicited emails from unknown senders, or even emails from my contacts that “just don’t smell right” – I’ve been sent emails from virus-infected computers, and a quick check (via a phone call) confirmed that the emails were fake.