Email Security

**Silvertones** · May 29th, 2010

One of the vulnerabilities to any OS is email. When I used Windose my antivirus would scan emails. What do we do in Ubuntu. I know most of the malicious stuff is geared towards Windows and won't affect my Linux box but just curious what to do.Nothing?

**HermanAB** · May 29th, 2010

Howdy,

Relax and enjoy your nice new Linux system. You can now freely click on anything with wild abandon, the way the internet gods intended.

**teh_drizzle** · May 29th, 2010

Hmm, maybe not the best advice. When using email you're still subjected to other attacks like phishing. Still be warned about clicking links in suspicious looking emails (they could be used to track your behavior, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_bug for a bit of general information).

You'd also like to help out the world by reducing viruses, even if your system is not affected by them (say an email has a malicious attachment and you forward it to a friend, they may be running Windows and may be vulnerable). You shouldn't be too concerned about this but it's still a thought.

If you were running a mail gateway this would be a larger concern.

My 2c.

**johnkills** · May 29th, 2010

I often wonder why a virus is not possible on linux, of course it is.

In Windows, if you receive a .EXE file and execute it and it is a virus, you are infected.

Linux is the same, if you receive a porn.deb file and execute it and it had malicious code. You could still consider a virus. So that would be a virus in linux.

**Andrew_Grant** · May 29th, 2010

A virus is quite possible in Linux, as it is in any other OS, in fact, I have heard that there are one or two out in the open.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware for more information
Install ClamAV and a GUI, such as clamtk, from the software centre, or Avast from the avast website, www.avast.com. Don't bother with avg. It's brilliant in the windows world, not so good int he Linux world. It also helps to install chkrootkit and/or rkhunter - both available in the software centre.

**Silvertones** · May 29th, 2010

The real answer is you don't need any of that crap. You might as well stay with windows. Linux is very secure as long as you don't do anything stupid.If you click on something in an email and it asks for root permissions and you give them without knowing what it is you deserve what you get.