Drive Thumb

I do not want to sound like an alarmist but I believe a lot of office folks are unaware of the dangers of using the innocent looking thumb-drive.

How often do you hear this dialogue in school or in the office?

"Hey, i didn't bring my laptop. But my slides are in my thumbdrive. Lets' plug & play in your computer to present"

"Hey, im lazy to email the files to you. Here you go, copy it from my thumb drive"

"Hey, I got something to print from my thumbdrive. Let me use your computer to print."

Just recently, there have been a few incidents where computers in my office were infected by GRL's thumbdrives. They would pop into the office and demand the staff plug it into their computers to print some documents for them. Hidden in the thumbdrives are trojan horses of all sorts. Our computer's antivirus did a good job in sweeping the trojans. (I think so).

Anyway, my message to you is: When someone insists that you plug in their thumb drive; be firm and state that you would like to scan their thumbdrive 1st before opening the files. Stress to them that your computer contains a lot of important information and hence the need to scan their thumbdrive.

Spending that extra 2-3 minutes will help save you from the trauma of losing your data. Also imagine the embarassment your colleague will face when their thumbdrive is found to be infected.

No clues on how to scan a thumbdrive? Call your company's computer helpline tomorrow.