Jewelzz

Ok, got this email from my bro in law asking if this will work (he thinks I'm a computer goddess, boy do I have him fooled) . I've never heard of it plus it sounds too good to be true. I would think if it worked there wouldn't be a threat of worms/virus' being passed through email. So all you geniuses can someone tell me

1. If they've ever heard of such a thing?
2. If so, does it work?

Here's the email he sent me:


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:

1) 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.

2) In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros).

3) In the window below where it prompts you to enter the new email address, type in WormAlert. 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 email address you entered (WormAlert). 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 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. Pass this on to all your friends

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Jewelzz

Duh!! Never mind, I found the answer myself. Guess I shoulda looked a lil bit harder before posting

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Electronic Punk

Theory is sound provided that the worm will fail sending if the email address is false, could also depend on how fast your mailserver responds...

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Sgt Shultz

That trick worked with old worms.
The newer ones don't fall for it, they just go to the first real name and continue.

It mightgive an error message though and that would let you know something was amiss.

madmatt

get virus protection and keep the def's current, that'll work. =)

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Jewelzz

If anyone is interesting in reading about it, here are 2 sites I found info on:

Here

Here

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lelu

I added it to my address book about a year ago.
I think it's a good back up to let you know something is going on.

dijital

lol

Jewelzz

Hehe, you're on your way to 1000 1 word posts dijital

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dijital

yup

ikester7579

You can use zone alarm to alert you also. The program that you use as a e-mail program on your pc you do not click the remember to allow to connect in zone alarm. In other words it has to ask permission through zone alarm before it sends. That way if it connects when it's not supposed to you know about it and can check to see whats going on. Also for those who have cable or dsl, zone alarm has a feature that locks all connections after so many minutes of inactivety. This keeps hackers off your pc when not in use but still turned on. Also keeps all programs from connecting. To find out if your pc has a open port or socket in which some can hack into, go to www.grc .com At this web site your pc will be scanned. And any open ports displayed. It will also give suggestion for closing them. Test your fire wall here. The results may surprise you. Windows xp has an open socket that even zone alarm does not stop. So you can go here www.grc.com and find out how to close it and keep hackers out. ikester

Eve

Jewelzz: heard it on the radio over here a while back. It is true. One of the main radio stations here has a program called Net News and they advised everyone to do it. I have it done myself and I attempted to send and e-mail to mulitple addresses with that one and the first (to check it out) and it wouldn't allow it. Works very good, and soooooooooo simple.

gonaads

It's a Band-Aid on a cracking Dam. LOL. It just luls you into a false sense of security.

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