Ask Edwin: Have you ever seen an email, or popup, that appears to be an update (say, from Java) that is actually a virus?

Absolutely! I just wrote an article about suspicious emails actually: https://helloedwin.com/what-to-do-with-suspicious-emails/I've contacted a few companies before asking if the emails are legitimate or not before clicking on anything.I like using Gmail as my mail client because they do a great job at blocking bad emails like that. Although sometimes their filter is too strong. I found one of my recent Edwin emails in my spam folder.More often than not though with something like Java or Flash, they usually bundle the update with some browser toolbar add-on that you have to knowingly unselect. While it's technically not a virus, a toolbar like that does operate in the grey area of malware. Mostly they've stopped doing that though.More often than a suspicious email, sometimes while browsing the web a virus will disguise itself as a pop-up asking you to update your Java/flash, or trick you into thinking you have a virus to get you to click on it, thereby installing the virus. It's a really tricky scam that's difficult to teach what to look out for. I will have to think about the best way to show people how to avoid that scenario.When looking more into these popups I learned a new term... Scareware! I will try to address scams like these in an upcoming post.Thanks for your question!