OT - Easily Detect Email Worms!

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
12,099
47
91
Thought I would share this great idea with all of you:

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!!
 

panhead49

Golden Member
Jan 27, 2001
1,880
0
0
this is a simple and easy idea to warn your self of worms.......i've had mine setup that way for a while.havent had a return.lol.forget where i origanialy heard of this method....but it is a good idea
 

Sukhoi

Elite Member
Dec 5, 1999
15,341
102
106
Am I correct that worms shouldn't effect webmail such as Yahoo and Hotmail?
 

Smoke

Distributed Computing Elite Member
Jan 3, 2001
12,650
207
106
This is a good idea. I've set it up many weeks/months ago. I sort of wish I'd get a virus (just kidding) to see if it actually works.

Maybe we need some "success" stories to share. :D

Thanks, badthad



//bad, bad, bad to the bone//
 

BadThad

Lifer
Feb 22, 2000
12,099
47
91
Keep in mind this is FAR from fool proof....but it certainly doesn't hurt anything. This chain email has been around for a few months now, 99.9% of chain email I get is absolute garbage but this struck me as somethng actually useful and mostly true for once, LOL. The one flaw in this is many of the worms randomly select addesses from your book and not necessarily in order. But hey, for the large, ignorant population not using antivirus tools, it may actually be useful if it even stops one stinkin worm.

- BT
 

medic

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
5,160
0
0
Hey good tip badthad!

My small tip is kind of a back to basic idea...for the last 6 months or so I now keep my address book empty, I deleted a few hundred or so contacts and for the small amount of time it took to copy them to a notepad, my contacts are a little more secure.