This a tip I received and it works.
If you are infected some of
the virus use your email addresses to send out
the virus.
Create a dummy email address. I used AAA with an email address of
aaa(a)nowhere.com Margie<
Hi Margie,
Don't mean to sound argumentative but, this is also known as a hoax. Here is an
article I received from the LangaList a while back. The first URL is for the
home page where many wonderful things can be found. I have received this
newsletter for several years, and just love it. There is an archive to view past
articles at the site. Hope this helps.
You are right many love Eudora and some swear by Pegusus too, and then some are
crazy about TheBat! in place of Outlook Express.
Sharon
Fred Langa's LangaList and
Langa.com:
http://www.langa.com/default.htm
1) The "!000" or "AAA" Hoax
I won't embarrass anyone by using names, but ever since the K l e z
worm went into overdrive, I've gotten a *lot* of well meaning but
mostly incorrect emails along these lines:
...Based on all the LangaList subscribers that have hit you
with the K L E Z worm, it obviously needs saying again there
is a very simple way to stop the spread of worms that
exploit your address book. All you have to do is create a
contact called WORM ALERT with an email address of 000
(zero, zero, zero), or !000, or ANY combination of
characters that 1) puts this contact first in your address
book, and 2) and is not a valid email address.
The worm tries to send to this address, and you get an NDR
(Non Delivery Report) with the recipient name of "WORM
ALERT". Usually, this stops the worm from proceeding down
the list of your contacts, but, it definitely alerts you
that you are infected with a worm that is trying to
propagate via your address book.
Anybody can do this, I wonder why more people don't.
We actually covered this before (last fall) and stated then that this
tip is (ahem) mostly pointless. At best, it might help stop the re-
propagation of a few of the simplest kinds of worms on a few kinds of
email clients. For many worms, and on many email clients, this tip
will do absolutely nothing useful.
But, ineffectiveness aside, there's an even larger problem: This "fix"
only kicks in *AFTER* your system has already been infected and is
actively trying to infect other systems. In other words, by the time
this trick tries to do anything at all, it's already too late: Your
system has already been damaged, and the worm is already seeking its
next victims!
You don't have to take my word for it:
http://www.europe.f-secure.com/hoaxes/0000hoax.shtml
http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=99213
http://www.lbl.gov/ICSD/Security/vulnerabilities/hoax.html
http://vmyths.com/hoax.cfm?id=263&page=3&cat=Poor%20advice%20from...
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2821795,00.html
A far, far better approach is to prevent any initial infection with
good online defenses--- firewalls, script blockers, anti-virus tools,
etc. If your system stays safe and clean, then you can rest assured it
also won't infect anyone else, and you won't need to rely on next-to-
useless things like the "!000" or "AAA" trick.