E-mail is one of the biggest threats（威胁）to your home computer. By understanding how E-mail works, and by taking some steps in how you deal with reading and writing messages, you can keep this threat out of your computer. When you exchange E-mail with someone else, the messages sent between you and that person pass through several computers before they reach their places. Imagine this conversation as it is taking place in an Internet“room”, a very, very big room. Anyone, or more exactly, any program can probably understand what is being said, because most Internet conversations are not hidden（隐藏）in any way. As a result, others may be listening in, capturing what you send, and using it for their own good.
E-mail-borne viruses（病毒）often arrive in attractive, fantastic appearances, much like the beautiful ads we receive by way of traditional mail that is made to sell us something. By beautiful appearances, an infected（感染）E-mail message seems to be something we want to read from someone we know, not a mean virus ready to destroy or damage our computers.
There are some steps that you can take to help you decide what to do with every E-mail message with an attachment（附件）that you receive. You should only read a message that passes all of these tests:
1）The Know Test: Is the E-mail from someone that you know?
2）The Received Test: Have you received E-mail from this sender before?
3）The Expect Test: Were you waiting for E-mail with an attachment from this sender?
4）The Meaning Test: Do the topic line of the E-mail massage and the name of the attachment both have meanings?
5）The Virus Test: Is the E-mail infected?
1. Which of the following is the main idea of the first paragraph?
A. We should not exchange our E-mail with someone else.
B. It is dangerous to read and write E-mail message sat home.
C. We should learn how E-mail works to take care of our computers.
D. Our chats on computers are usually going on in a big Internet room.
2. What does the underlined word“capturing”probably mean?
A. taking B. hiding C. receiving D. destroying
3. As the Internet is open to anyone, we should ___________.
A. not read and write messages in our home computers
B. not allow nice advertisements to reach our computers
C. stop our conversations while someone is listening in it
D. be careful with the attractive E-mails sent by strangers
4. What is the passage mainly talking about?
A. The threats of E-mail.
B. The safety of home computers.
C. The E-mail-borne viruses.
D. The steps to receive E-mail messages
