Another Day With My PC

Are you constantly being annoyed by Autoplay? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Autoplay is that window which appears whenever you insert a CD or plug in a flash drive. It presents you with options as to the available programs you may want to use in opening the files inside the media.

Some see this as very useful and convenient. For others, they are irritated whenever they are always prompted as to what they would want to do with the files inside the drive or disk. If you’re going to ask me though, I see Autoplay as something of both, with danger on the side.

For unsuspecting or careless users, Autoplay may just pave the way for malware inside the disk that they’ve inserted to be introduced into his system. Instead of exercising prudence by scanning the disk first, users are tempted to immediately open the files inside the media since Autoplay has already prompted them as to the available or compatible programs that could be used to open them.

Don’t just click around or continue typing when you’ve just introduced a media to your PC since you might accidentally click “OK” when Autoplay to pops out. If the files therein turn out to be infected, then you’ll be spending the next few hours scanning and ridding your hard drive of unwanted guests.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 1:42 am and is filed under PC Security, Malware, Spyware . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.