e-mail attachments

[gcorkyg]

I often get e-mails with attachments that are jpg's or jpeg's. I download and
open them and its a picture or image. At the bottom of the e-mail there is
often a left and right arrow to go to the next image. If I continue, I see
images that have nothing to do with the e-mail. They are from another e-mail
or a site I've previously visited. Sometimes I don't even recognize the item
as something I've seen before. If I forward the e-mail and then I go to my
"sent" e-mails, and open them the same thing happens. This is scary, as some
of the stuff is personal, some is probably not suitable for kids and some I
don't even recognize. The question is, "Did this unintended bunch of images
get forwarded with my fwd'd e-mail or is it part of my c-drive or what?
Also, How can I prevent this from happening again? It takes me 10 min
sometimes to delete all the extraneous unintended images and then to clean
out my recycle bin. Please help thanks, use basic wording as you can see,
I'm a komuterklutz. I believe it may have something to do with picture and
fax viewer as that is often the title at the top after I've deleted an image.

 

[Olórin]

I often get e-mails with attachments that are jpg's or jpeg's. I download
and
open them and its a picture or image. At the bottom of the e-mail there is
often a left and right arrow to go to the next image. If I continue, I see
images that have nothing to do with the e-mail. They are from another
e-mail
or a site I've previously visited. Sometimes I don't even recognize the
item
as something I've seen before. If I forward the e-mail and then I go to
my
"sent" e-mails, and open them the same thing happens. This is scary, as
some
of the stuff is personal, some is probably not suitable for kids and some
I
don't even recognize. The question is, "Did this unintended bunch of
images
get forwarded with my fwd'd e-mail or is it part of my c-drive or what?
Also, How can I prevent this from happening again? It takes me 10 min
sometimes to delete all the extraneous unintended images and then to clean
out my recycle bin. Please help thanks, use basic wording as you can see,
I'm a komuterklutz. I believe it may have something to do with picture and
fax viewer as that is often the title at the top after I've deleted an
image.

When you say, "At the bottom of the e-mail there is often a left and right
arrow to go to the next image" do you actually mean "At the bottom of the
screen that's showing the picture there is...", or are you sure that you are
"in the e-mail" when viewing the picture?

Are you saving the attachment out of the e-mail and then opening that, or
opening the attachment directly from within the e-mail? It's not clear from
your description.

1) If the former, then the arrows in Picture and Fax Viewer are simply
taking you to the next image in the folder you saved it to. If you don't
want them visible, then either don't save them in the first place, or delete
them as soon as you're done, or look into access control and security for
your machine.

2) If you're opening the picture from within the e-mail, then what you're
browsing through with the arrows are other pictures in a temporary folder.
As you're also seeing images from sites you've visited, it sounds like this
is your Temporary Internet Files folder. In this case you need to clear that
folder down: look in

Control Panel > Intenet Options >General tab > Browsing history > Delete

for Internet Explorer v7; different but similar for other versions. You may
also want to look at your temporary files and clear them down too:

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp

and perhaps

C:\temp and/or C:\Windows\temp

and folders within

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
(especially any whose name starts with "OLK"). Some of these will have been
cleared down through the Control Panel applet.

You may also want to check any options in your e-mail program for its own
settings for temporary file storage - you haven't said what you're using, so
I can't assume anything about where else this may be.


You'll probably want to think about security in general, in terms of
separate accounts for other users of your machine, if you're concerned about
what they may see.

 

[Twayne]

I often get e-mails with attachments that are jpg's or jpeg's. I

download and open them and its a picture or image. At the bottom of
the e-mail there is often a left and right arrow to go to the next
image. If I continue, I see images that have nothing to do with the
e-mail. They are from another e-mail or a site I've previously
visited. Sometimes I don't even recognize the item as something I've
seen before. If I forward the e-mail and then I go to my "sent"
e-mails, and open them the same thing happens. This is scary, as
some of the stuff is personal, some is probably not suitable for kids
and some I don't even recognize. The question is, "Did this
unintended bunch of images get forwarded with my fwd'd e-mail or is
it part of my c-drive or what? Also, How can I prevent this from
happening again? It takes me 10 min sometimes to delete all the
extraneous unintended images and then to clean out my recycle bin.
Please help thanks, use basic wording as you can see, I'm a
komuterklutz. I believe it may have something to do with picture and
fax viewer as that is often the title at the top after I've deleted
an image.

Are those attachments from someone you know? I suspect not, or you
would have mentioned it or just told them to quit sending that stuff.

These are, at best, spam and at worst, a virus, worm, trojan or other
type of malware and your machine may have been infected. It's time to
run your antivirus software (be sure it's updated) and every spyeware
detector you have to clean off the machine. If you don't know about
spyware detectors, ask and someone will respond.

In the future, NEVER open unexpected emails and ESPECIALLY attachments
unless you know who sent them, and were expecting them. If you didn't
expect an attachment from someone you know, ask them what it is before
opening it; they may not realize their machines are sending out malware.

Regards,