A Conversation for How to Avoid Computer Viruses
.ZIP
IanG Started conversation Jul 4, 2000
Whilst it is true that there is such a thing as a self-extracting .ZIP file, it doesn't have a .ZIP extension - it will actually have a .EXE extension. The advice this article gives is therefore a little alarmist and misleading - it recommends that you check .ZIP files in WinZip before extracting their contents. Actually just running a .ZIP file will simply fire up WinZip for you, i.e. it does exactly the same thing. It's only the .EXEs you need to worry about.
The catch is that these self-extracting archives sometimes give themselves the same icon as a .ZIP file, so unless you are sure what extension the files have, you shouldn't just run these things as they might not be as they appear. (Just as the love virus tried to fool you into thinking it was a TXT file.)
Simple solution: make sure that you can always see a file's full extension. This can be done off the Tools menu Folder Options item. (Varies on different versions of Windows, but basically you need to disable the item that says "Hide extensions..")
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