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] ".

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] 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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[Dököll]

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:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ADDRESS BOOK



Here's what you do :

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] ".


Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email

addressed to [e-mail] 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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Your a gentleman and scholar for posting such good and helpful data. Will give it a whirl...Thanks much!

[cjbrx3115]

Lol I'll try it too.

[bartonc]

I've seen that before. It will notify you of worm activity. There's no guarrentee that the worm will give up after the failed attemp, though.

[debasisdas]

R u sure the bug will not atempt further after the 1st failed attempt
n
what if there is already any mail id starting with numbers.
because numbers have higher precedence so comes first in list.

[cjbrx3115]

R u sure the bug will not atempt further after the 1st failed attempt
n
what if there is already any mail id starting with numbers.
because numbers have higher precedence so comes first in list.

Well then you would have to make the fake email your 1st priority by looking at your first contact and aiming higher. As for the failed attempt thing....I'm clueless!

[Ganon11]

In any case, can anyone think of a reason it would do any harm? Even if it doesn't protect against further worm activity, it at least lets you know of its presence - that's a big plus, and I don't see any minus', so it looks like it's worth it.

[Metaphis]

I will take the liberty to point you to a few site that explain why you should not do it ( not because its bad but because it is useless)

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/quickfix.htm
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/virus-control-hoax.html
http://antivirus.about.com/cs/hoaxes/p/aaaa.htm

good reading

[Killer42]

...you should not do it...

I have to disagree. The fact that it might not work is no reason not to do it. After all, even if it doesn't protect you from infection (as it obviously won't), it would at least provide an extra fall-back. That is, notification if you have been infected and started sending out bogus e-mail.

Let's look at it logically...

Pro
If a worm does get through your defences and starts mailing itself from your system, you'll probably get a notification that you wouldn't have otherwise.

Con
An extra entry in your address book - who cares!

Or try looking at it another way. A smoke alarm will not stop a fire. And in fact it might not work at all. But does that mean I shouldn't have one?

[Metaphis]

There are thousands of worms in the wild and even more virus that do not classify as worms. Among them only a very very small part of them are affected by this bug (Melissa is a exemple). Most newer worm use there own SMTP server to send messages and will not enter your email address as the source email. You will most likely not receive any Mail delivery failure and it would not stop the worm from spreading at all. Other have the cleaver technique to take an email from your address book and use it as the sender, when one of your contact receive a virus the kind person could then try to contact the sender telling him he is infected but the real source of infection (you) will not be aware of it.

So you can still do theses procedures but it is like saying I will put a small rock in the front of my door because a thief that want to enter will trip on it and it will stop him from robbing my house. It is not really effective and may give some user a small sentiment of security making them careless.

Most of the time, the general rule applies: Do not open attachments you did not expect even from people you know. At least expect a personalized message so you know the sender is aware of sending it there. Also, a good antivirus (There are free one like avast and AVG) is a good idea to reduce the risk.

[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.