More 'puter stuff

[Aquabella]

Hey Guys,

Someone sent this to me at work. Looks like it would work to me. What do you think?

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ADDRESS BOOK!

I learned of a computer trick today that's really
ingenious in its simplicity. As you may know,
when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it
heads straight for your email address book, and sends
itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your
friends and associates.
This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your
computer, but it will stop it from using your address
book to spread further, and it will alert you to the
fact, that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do: first, open your address book and
click on "new contact," just as you would do if you
were adding a new friend to your list of email
addresses.

In the window where you would type your friend's
first name, type in AAAAAAA. Same in space
labeled e-mail address

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: The
"name" AAAAAAA will be placed at the top of your
address book as entry #1. This will be where the
worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your
friends.

But, when it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA, it will
be undeliverable because of the phony email address
you entered. If the first attempt fails (which it will
because of the phony address), the worm goes no
further and your friends will not be infected.

Here's the second great advantage of this method: If
an email cannot be delivered, you will be notified of
this in your In Box almost immediately. Hence, if
you ever get an email telling you that an email
addressed to A could not be delivered, you know
right away that you have the worm virus in your
system. You can then take steps to get rid of it! Pretty
slick huh?

If everybody you know does this then you need not
ever worry about opening mail from friends.

 

[DrownedRat]

Hey AB,
That would work as far a notification goes, however just because the first e-mail bounces dosen't mean the remaining valid ones won't be sent. However as the note say's, if you get a bounced mail to AAAAAAA you'll know what's going and can inform your sysadmin. Honestly this sort of thing really is only an issue on mail clients like Outlook and Outlook express (try to not use Outlook express as it's a security nightmare). If you like, check out www.mozilla.org They have an excellent browser replacement and a fantastic mail client called "Thunderbird". This is opensourse software ported to Windows so it's completely free and once you get used to some of the more advanced features in mozilla like tabbed browsing and a pop-up ad blocker, you won't go back to internet explorer.
Hope this helps, and feel free to messege me if you have any questions
Cheers

Aquabella once bubbled...
Hey Guys,

Someone sent this to me at work. Looks like it would work to me. What do you think?

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ADDRESS BOOK!

I learned of a computer trick today that's really
ingenious in its simplicity. As you may know,
when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it
heads straight for your email address book, and sends
itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your
friends and associates.
This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your
computer, but it will stop it from using your address
book to spread further, and it will alert you to the
fact, that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do: first, open your address book and
click on "new contact," just as you would do if you
were adding a new friend to your list of email
addresses.

In the window where you would type your friend's
first name, type in AAAAAAA. Same in space
labeled e-mail address

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: The
"name" AAAAAAA will be placed at the top of your
address book as entry #1. This will be where the
worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your
friends.

But, when it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA, it will
be undeliverable because of the phony email address
you entered. If the first attempt fails (which it will
because of the phony address), the worm goes no
further and your friends will not be infected.

Here's the second great advantage of this method: If
an email cannot be delivered, you will be notified of
this in your In Box almost immediately. Hence, if
you ever get an email telling you that an email
addressed to A could not be delivered, you know
right away that you have the worm virus in your
system. You can then take steps to get rid of it! Pretty
slick huh?

If everybody you know does this then you need not
ever worry about opening mail from friends.

 

[CBulla]

actually, the aaa@aa.aaa is a myth. Since these viruses and such emulate their own smtp, by the time you've recieved the notification it'll have already sent to your whole address book.

There is a great write up on it at snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/quickfix.htm

 

[DrownedRat]

CBulla once bubbled...
actually, the aaa@aa.aaa is a myth. Since these viruses and such emulate their own smtp, by the time you've recieved the notification it'll have already sent to your whole address book.

There is a great write up on it at snopes.com

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/quickfix.htm

That's why you put aaaaa not aaaa@aaa.
Outlook will freak without a fully qualified name. Or it should (it's been a while)

 

[Aquatic Eagle]

This will work if you are on AOL. If you are on AOL and try to send something to another AOL user and it's not a valid name, the letter isn't sent at all until you correct the invalid aol name. This only works if you are on AOL and are sending it to AAAAAAAAA@aol.com or something similar to AOL.

 

[CBulla]

The problem with the xxx@xxx.xxx is that the viruses that propogate themselves via email merely use your email address book as its medium in which probably locations to propogate itself to are collected. The virus does not use your email server or anyone elses to send things around, but is in fact acts as its own smtp emulator and will send out that way. By the time you recieve a notification back, if it does bounce to you and not members of your address book as one recent virus does, the damage is already done and the virus has already sent to all members in your contacts list, possibly more than once.

The erronious contact only ensures that if it is a virus that sends on your behalf, that you will get a returned email.

 

[MgicTwnger]

Anti-virus software. Believe me, it's worth it. I like Norton (Symantec).

 

[Babelfish]

Yeah, Symantec is cool. Just be sure to click on the "auto update" button frequently and get the latest virus-library downloaded. Heck, new viruses come out every week!

 

[MgicTwnger]

Babelfish once bubbled...
Yeah, Symantec is cool. Just be sure to click on the "auto update" button frequently and get the latest virus-library downloaded. Heck, new viruses come out every week!

If you have a persistent connection (DSL, cable, etc.), you can schedule most anti-virus products to download the library and run a scan every night.:mean: