Easily Detect Email Worms!

[BadThad]

As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your e-mail 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 e-mail addresses. In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros). In the window below where it prompts you to enter the new e-mail address, type in Worm@Alert. The message "The e-mail address you have entered is not a valid e-mail address. Do you still want to add this address" Click "yes". Then complete everything by clicking add, enter, ok, etc.

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: the "name" !000 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 !000, it will be undeliverable because of the phony e-mail address you entered (Worm@Alert). 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 e-mail cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your In Box almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an e-mail telling you that an e-mail addressed to Worm@Alert 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!

Hope this helps!!

 

[yakko]

I have no address book.

 

[hevnsnt]

Only works on Outlook Express.. Not Outlook.

 

[FreeAgent]

tanks for the info.

 

[FreeAgent]

It didn't work

 

[vi edit]

Snopes says "minimally useful"

 

[TomC25]

my email admin at work found it is a hoax

here is the text from the hoax site



!000 Hoax
December 2001

I was kind of hoping that this one would die of its own accord, but no such luck. While not really false, this list of instructions does not really help you prevent infections and could fool you into being careless. For the few worms that remote control your Outlook application, this would tell you that you had already spammed the world with who knows how many worm infected e-mails. For the current crop of worms that spread via e-mail, which contain their own internal mailer, this would do nothing. Your time would be much better spent installing a good antivirus program and keeping it updated.

Remember, don't run attachments that you were not expecting to receive, even those that appear to have been sent by a friend. Verify them first with the friend before running them (assuming you really trust the friend).

Here is a very helpful tip concerning worm viruses you could get in an email:

As you may know, 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 tip won't keep the virus from
getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book
to spread itself further, and it will alert you to the fact that a worm virus
has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do:

1. Open your address book and add a "New Contact" just as you would do if
you were adding someone to your list of email addresses;

2. In the window where you would type your contact's first name, type !000
(that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros);

3. In the box where you would enter the email address, type WormAlert;

4. Click Add;

5. Then, click OK.

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: The name !000 will appear at
the top of your email list as entry number:

A. This is the first email address a worm virus will find when it tries to
send all of your friends a virus infected email. But because the 1st email
address is invalid, it will be undeliverable, and the worm virus stops any
further attempts to access your address book.

B. The second advantage of this tip is that you will be notified when an
email cannot be delivered because of an invalid email address. You will
receive an email telling you that your email to "WormAlert" could
not be delivered. If you get this message, you'll know right away that you've
got a worm virus in your system. You can then take the appropriate steps to get
rid of it. Just knowing that you even have a virus is half the battle.

This is a very helpful tip, so pass it on.




Thanks for thinking of us though badthad

 

[notfred]

1) You do NOT immediately get a response from undeliverable mail. You get it whenever you SMTP server determines that it is undeliverable. usually 24 hours later.

2) A worm would have NO WAY OF KNOWING if it was trying to reach an invalid email address. the message would send just fine, and it would continue along sending all the other messages.

3) Even if it did have some way of knowing whether the address was valid or not, no one would write a worm that would automatically give up after 1 failed delivery.

4) You have no idea how email works, do you?