How To Protect Your Address Book

[cjbrx3115]

Hey guys-

I just got this email from my friend. I'm not sure it will really work (it's a forward), so I'm askin' you people. Well, here it is:

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HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ADDRESS BOOK


I learned 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
"A".
For the screen name or email address, type "[e-mail] A ".

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.


But, when it tries to send itself to [e-mail] ,

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 [e-mail] 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.
Pass this on to your friends.
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[Killer42]

All true. I am quite cautious, and have up to date protection.

However, I have experienced one case where something like this might have helped. Except, of course, for the usual problem that the person who could have benefited from it would have been too clueless to even put in this little extra safeguard.

A person had me in his address list even though we had not corresponded in months. Suddenly I got a weird message from him, obviously fake. I contacted him and it turned out he had been infected with something-or-other and was completely unaware of it. If I had simply dumped the fake e-mail, he wouldn't have known and would have continued spreading it. Unless he had something to warn him, such as the AAAAA thing.

As I said though, one of the biggest problems here is that he wouldn't have thought to put in even this simple safeguard. So I guess it's a bit of a circular argument. If you could convince people to do the AAAAA thing, you could probably convince them to do something more effective.

Even so, I think it's probably not a bad thing to have, just as an extra backup that might catch something which slips by your defences. As long as people don't rely on it.

[Denburt]

Many valid points made however I will have to agree with Killer on this one. I will add that entry, good idea if only to POSSIBLY receive a rejection notice. I have had similar instances where the person had no clue they had the virus fortunately they were clients so it actually turned out good for me since it informed me they had a virus $$$. I bet the virus writer didn't see that one coming or he would have simply inserted "stupid user" or something similar in the from lines. Sure they can use their own SMTP server or find one that is open but I think there are more half wits trying to be programmers out there doing this rather than an actual professional trying to wreak some real havoc.

BTW for a virus writer to actually verify an email before going to the next entry... I send out lots of automated emails and when I make a typo or an email turns up a dead link it doesn't stop or error out, the program has no clue, it keeps right on processing. You would need to add code to verify an email address and for most virus writers they just won't take the time.