I haven't tried, and don't intend, to deliberately get a virus/worm on my computer to check whether this little trick works or not -- but it certainly won't hurt to do as this article suggests. No, it will not keep your computer free from viruses but it could help to keep you from sending infected emails to your friends. Additionally, as the article states, it will give you a 'heads up' if/when you get an email virus on your machine. Thanks to MzBean who forwarded this article to me. ---- Ernest
July 7 - Footnote to the above: Since domains come and domains go -- make sure that the mailto address (in this case, "wormalert@butwhere.com") is not a valid email address or else the alert to you will not work. There is nothing magic about the actual address as long as it is phony and if it is sent, the Mail Daemon will return it to you. To test, generate an email to whatever email address you can think of, send it, and then wait for a few seconds to see if it is returned as " ... address unknown -- could not be sent". If it is returned, then you are okay. If it is not returned, then you need to generate another email address -- make up something weird if you have to so that you know it is not a legitimate address.
I learned a computer trick today that's really ingenious in it 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" (sans quotes, of course). In the window below where it prompts you to enter the new email address, type in WormAlert@butwhere.com . Then complete everything by clicking add, enter, ok, etc.
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 since many address books sort alphabetically. 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 (WormAlert@butwhere.com). 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 InBox almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to WormAlert@butwhere.com 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 needn't ever worry about opening mail from friends.
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This Page Updated: July 27, 2002
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