What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

How to protect your e-mail address book

jimscott

Tropical Fish Enthusiast
From an Email I got from another CP hobbyist:


A computer repairman says this is like having gold. This is a good thing. 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 AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA

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.

When it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA, 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 AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm virus in your </ FONT>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.

Whaddya think?
 
That's a pretty broad generalization. Who's to say that the worm won't start at the Zs? Not all viruses work the same - there are plenty that never even touch your address book. I wonder why these things get started.
~Joe
 
Agreed.

If anything, it would skip down to the next address and then the next address and so on.......
 
So it's your fault I've been getting all of these !@#!#$!@$ emails?!


On a serious note: I HIGHLY doubt the validity of the first point. It's easier to program something to send itself to everyone in your address book rather than have it wait for some sort of confirmation that the email did or did not make it through. Occam's Razor, etc, etc. The 2nd part, however, is noteworthy.
 
Okay... never mind!
 
Back
Top