I have just received an email with an attachment that wants to open in a binary file. Have never seen this before. What is this and is it safe to open it, or should I just delete everything?

 

if ya don't know the sender, I would get rid of it, or anything you are unsure of.

 

Normally I do immediately erase anything anonymous that arrives. In this case it is a business acquaintance. I was not expecting anything from him and I can't reach him right now to check on it.
What is a binary file?

 

download it then scan it with anti virus . every thing i down load gets scaned. even if somthing comes from a known source it can still contain a virus if that persons computer is infected

unless you share software with this person ie you use a specific program to do bussiness, you will not be able to open the binary file. sounds like there was an error in uploading and sending. wait for contact

 

Binary file
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A binary file is a computer file which may contain any type of data, encoded in binary form for computer storage and processing purposes; for example, computer document files containing formatted text. Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; binary files that contain only textual data - without, for example, any formatting information - are called plain text files. In many cases, plain text files are considered to be different from binary files because binary files are made up of more than just plain text. When downloading, a completely functional program without any installer is also often called program binary, or binaries (as opposed to the source code).

 

never open any attachment before scanning it for a virus
setup your virus scanner to check the e-mails as they come in
there were viruses that were taking e-mail contacts when infecting a computer and sending it on to everyone in that persons contact list

 

Scan it first and I would still wait to hear from the guy who sent it. A binary file can contain almost any type of file like a word document, picture, text etc..

 

Your email service provider runs virus scanning on all emails (in and out) run through their system. Chances are, since you know the guy, it is fine. If you have a virus scanner, go ahead and scan it a second time, but very few attachments that are malicious get through the service providers systems. With that said, especially in xp and vista, better safe than sorry.

If you don't have virus scanning go here -> http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Vir...=dl&tag=button and download the free virus software, it is the best. I often download it on clients computers to make sure their virus software is catching everything. More often than not, it doesn't. Most viruses come from downloads off the net, generally through internet explorer, or through sharing of discs drives, jump drives and unsafe network activities or unsecured networks.

Generally speaking, viruses are executable files, or files which install and run a program. Binary files are not that type of file.

If you want to, and it is not sensitive, or personal info, email it to me and I will check it out. I think there are something like 32 viruses that can infect a MAC so I don't have the same worries that you 'window' people have.

 

Thanks guys for the answers. I already have AVG installed and it told me that it was fine, so took a chance and opened it. Everything was OK in spite of my worry.