Email Anti Virus FAQ

Viruses

Email is one of the first and most popular use of the Internet. Its widespread use has resulted in it being exploited for both virus attacks and junk email known as SPAM.

An email virus is computer code within an email that when activated, causes unexpected and harmful effects to your computer. They often use your address book to send themselves on to new email users without you knowing. The email volume increases due to viruses cause disruption to email services.

Email Anti-Virus Service Description

Kingston has invested in a Network based email Anti-Virus service to protect you and the Kingston network from virus threats. This aims to protect you from receiving email viruses. However, viruses can also be distributed over the Internet without using email, so Anti-Virus software is still required on your computer.

Our email Anti-Virus service is designed to identify new viruses, both known and unknown, using techniques or characteristics which are indicative of an email virus. Email Anti-Virus is provided with Kingston and Karoo Internet services that use a karoo.co.uk email. This helps protect you from receiving viruses via email on karoo.co.uk email accounts. It also prevents virus emails that are sent from your account being delivered, when you have a virus on your computer.

Benefits

• Helps protect you from email viruses.
• Helps prevent you from wasting time recovering your computer from email virus incidents.
• Helps provide a reliable and usable email service. The removal of virus emails from the Karoo email service will improve the email service for uninfected emails.

Examples

• A Karoo customer that uses their Karoo.co.uk email account will gain the benefit of this service.
• A business customer that uses a domain name and forwards emails to a karoo.co.uk email account will receive the service.

Charges

• Provided free of charge with Karoo dial-up and broadband Broadband service. Provided free of charge for Business dial-up customers and RapidBiz customers that forward email to a karoo.co.uk address.

Additional Information

• No virus scanning service offers a 100% detection rate and therefore we accept no liability for any failure of the service to detect a virus.


Email Anti-Virus
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's):

What does email Anti-Virus do?

This helps prevent viruses being emailed to your computer and will improve the email services Kingston provides.

Am I included in this service?

Kingston has activated this for all customers using (or forwarding emails to) a karoo.co.uk email.

I am a business customer and use my own domain name. Does this service apply to me?

If you use a domain name and forward this to a karoo.co.uk email account, then this service does apply and your emails are covered. Business customers that use a domain name and collect their emails on their own email server are not protected by this email Anti-Virus service.

Why has Kingston implemented email Anti-Virus?

Kingston has introduced this service to protect you from viruses that may be delivered via the Karoo email service. Implementing this will help protect and improve your email service when new email based viruses are released.

How do I know my email has been scanned?

Every email is scanned, except for encrypted email, and a banner is attached stating that a message has been scanned and is virus free. It states "This email and all attachments have been scanned by Kingston Communications email Anti-Virus service and no known viruses were detected."

I already use my Anti-Virus software to protect my computer and don’t want your email Anti-Virus service. Can I opt out?

You cannot opt out of the service. Anti-Virus software has the limitation of you not having the most up-to date virus signature on your computer and therefore not stopping the virus from infecting your computer. Kingston is protecting its network and the services we deliver to all our customers and therefore this service is provided free of charge.

What happens to emails that are sent to me with viruses in them?

If a virus is detected the sender will receive notification that this email was blocked. They will need to clean their computer and re-send the document.

I sent a virus. What do I do?

You will receive a notification that your email has not been sent. Our system will not pass through infected emails. Please check that your Anti-Virus software on your computer is up to date and remove the virus and then re-send. Links to other useful computer protection software is available here


I have received a virus notification, but my Anti-Virus software on my computer has not detected it? Does this mean I'm not infected?

No. The first thing to do is check that your Anti-Virus scanner has up to date signature files. As new viruses are discovered, the virus scanner companies create new signature files, which are used to catch the new viruses. These signatures are usually freely available from the companies' web sites. Without up to date signatures, your scanner will not be able to catch all the most recent viruses.

Click here for more information.

I received a notification that I sent a virus but have not got a virus on my computer. Why did I receive this notification?

Many of the latest viruses forge the sender's email address from the infected users email address book. The technique, commonly known as spoofing, is used in order to cause confusion and attempt to hide the identity of the true virus sender. Someone who has you in his or her address book is likely to be infected.

Someone called 'admin' from my domain sent me a virus, but we don't have a user called 'admin'. What's going on?

When a computer becomes infected sometimes the virus trawls the users' Outlook address book. If it finds Jim@domain.com it will mail itself to that address claiming to be from admin@domain.com. This is to make it look like a local email from a trusted source. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to track where it's really coming from as the 'from' address is spoofed. If you receive a notification message stating that someone called 'admin' sent you a virus, it probably means that someone you communicate with via email has become infected with the virus.

Does the email Anti-Virus Service slow the delivery of email down?

It takes a few extra seconds to process an average email through the system.

How do you scan and how often do you update your virus scanners?

Our partners use 4 virus scanners. One of these is a rules-based and heuristic scanner, and enables the system to intercept viruses based on certain characteristics before an Anti-Virus signature is available. The system automatically updates signatures every 10 minutes with incremental updates before they are even publicly available. In addition, our partners ensure that signatures are updated instantly by the anti-virus software authors, including incremental updates normally unavailable to other subscribers. Our partners also monitor the key Anti-Virus centres for breaking news and trend analysis.

What about Anti-Spam?

Kingston is also launching an Anti-Spam service. This will be available in the near future.