This happens all year round, thoughit’s most common around Christmas, Valentine’s Day and (American)Mother’s Day. That’s when the highest percentage of the Western world will miss postal deliveries. Now this is one of many “baits”(more to come), but “hook” most often is an email attachment. While it is possible for images (specifically, files ending in JPG or JPEG) or Microsoft Word documents to contain viruses, this scam usually used a compressed file (ending in ZIP) containing an executable program (ending in EXE).
Victims open the attachment, then double-click on the EXE file contained within. Again, because you’ve chosen to RUN the file, you have effectively told your anti-virus,“hey, don’t worry about these guys, I trust them.” Once done,this type of infection can be very difficult to remove.