Are viruses attached to my email after I send it?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #30, I look at the idea that viruses attach to emails after they
leave a computer and the different problems associated with local and online
email accounts.

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Attaching viruses

No, you’re not way off base.

Virus scanning is always an important thing or an important part of the arsenal we use to keep ourselves safe; but there’s definitely a misunderstanding here:

• To the best of my knowledge, it’s never actually been true that viruses attach after your messages leave your computer.

If a virus is going to attach to a message that is coming from your computer, it’s going to do so on your computer: when that message is composed and sent.

Online and offline email

What’s confusing things here, I think, is the current rash of online account hacks; where people’s email accounts are getting hacked into.

• Their computer isn’t involved at all.

Basically, a hacker learns their password or somehow cracks their password, and logs into their online email account from some other computer – somewhere else on the planet. Once they’ve logged into their email account, they can then start sending mail like crazy including, if they so desire, attachments that happen to be viruses.

That looks like it’s mail that came from you, but it didn’t; it came from the hacker; it came from the hacker’s computer. It came from the hacker accessing your account online – rather than actually doing anything nefarious to your computer.

Virus attaching to email

So, both are possible. But, like I said, if a virus is going to attach to an email that you send from your computer, it’s going to attach:

• When you send it;

• Or it’s going to start sending email from your computer with the virus attached.

That’s in the decline right now. It’s not as common as accounts being hacked online, and hackers logging into accounts directly and then sending email that way.