I wasn't going to bomb the whole list with an answer to an off-topic question but since this will otherwise take on a life of its own and it is Frydaye GMT, here's what's really happening with such messages:
Virus spoofing Email-distributed viruses that use spoofing, such the Klez or Sobig virus, take a random name from somewhere on the infected person’s hard disk and mail themselves out as if they were from that randomly chosen address. Recipients of these viruses are therefore misled as to the address from which they were sent, and may end up complaining to, or alerting the wrong person. As a result, users of uninfected computers may be wrongly informed that they have, and have been distributing a virus. And the bounce messages, like what you received, come back to the spoofed address. If you receive an alert that you’re sending infected emails, first run a virus scan using McAfee or NAV) or use an on-line scan such as Trend Micro's Housecall <http://housecall.trendmicro.com>. If you are uninfected, then you may want to reply to the infection alert with this information: “Your virus may have appeared to have been sent by me, but I have scanned my system and I am not infected. A number of email-distributed viruses fake, or spoof, the ‘From' address using a random address taken from the Outlook contacts list or from Web files stored on the hard drive.” Don't bother. It just clogs up the Internet. See next paragraph. But keep in mind that a virus alert message is quite often auto generated and sent via an anti-virus server and so replying to the original email may not elicit a response. Alternatively, if you receive an email-distributed virus, look at the Internet Headers information to see where the email actually originated from, before firing off a complaint or virus alert to the person you assume sent it. Because that person probably didn't. Can we learn to use Google? Can we get back to VWs now? Jim Arnott Technical Support Eastern Oregon Net, Inc. |
Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of
Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection
will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!
Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com
The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.
Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.