CompuTips: Virus and Email Address Book
How to protect your Email address book
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,
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 'A'.
For the screen name or email address,
type [email protected]
Now, here's what you've done and why it works:
The 'name 'A' 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.
When it tries to send itself to [email protected],
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 bothered.
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 [email protected] 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!
If everybody you know does this
then you need not worry about opening mail from friends.
How to protect your Email address book
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,
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 'A'.
For the screen name or email address,
type [email protected]
Now, here's what you've done and why it works:
The 'name 'A' 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.
When it tries to send itself to [email protected],
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 bothered.
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 [email protected] 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!
If everybody you know does this
then you need not worry about opening mail from friends.
