JaneandJim

I just received an email entitled "Mail delivery failure". It told me I didn't have authority to email somebody I'd never even heard of, let alone emailed. But it contained two attachments.

I deleted it without opening them, but is this another way of spreading viruses? Or am I being too suspicious and tried to email somebody without knowing it? There's nothing in my sent box.

Jane

helinuk

It's the netsky virus. I expect you are also getting emails that say:
re: your mail
re: your account
the spoof emails are the way the virus is transfered to your pc. use l"ive update" with norton - we had the netsky p. virus a few weeks ago after one of the kids thought the email was genuine. Symantec do have the toolfix on line thank goodness.
Helinuk

ABCDiamond

This is quite common, it is probably where someone has effectively used your email address as a fake, and sent someone else an email with a virus, but it has been returned to you as their email address didn't exist, or their anti spam system rejected it.

The attachments probably contained a virus, or mayge a message saying that the original atteachment had been deleted as it contained a virus.

Either way, deleting without opening is the best option.

One email address that I use, and used to show openly on my website, gets about 10 of these each week, together with about 30-40 unsolicited emails daily, selling products I don't need !

Do not ever display your email address in a web site.

Unfortunately another way that spammers get email addresses, is where you send an email to someone, and they forward it to a friend, and on and on. I received one like that once, and it ended up containing nearly 100 email addresses, all available to use by a spammer.

anya4oz

Avoiding having Outlook configured on your PC is a good line of defense, too, as many viruses exploit Outlook to disseminate.

Also, many viruses exploit IE5 and below - so it's worth upgrading your browser if you're still running an old version.

www.antivirus.com has excellent virus info, including details of the many 'hoax' viruses that are supposedly doing the rounds.

Anya.

AJR

Hi
I use mailwasher, it looks at your emails while they are still on the server. You then have the option to delete,bounceback and blacklist anything you dont like the look of.
Alan

JaneandJim

Thanks for the replies. Its VERY rare that I get spam these days. In fact, this is the first since I left England nearly 4 months ago, so it took me by surprise.

I know Outlook is supposed to be bad, but I like it! We have a firewall built in to our ADSL router, so I'll just have to keep being vigilant with the emails. Norton completely stuffs up our PCs, conflicts and stuff, so we have a different virus checker. I should update it, though.

Jane

teach

Norton completely stuffed up my PC too, I had to run the recovery disk it came with 3 years ago. Lost all my updates plus the few things I had saved on my drive. Luckily I very rarely save anything on it. I bought McAfee which seems to be blasting them before they get through Outlook. What is interesting is the log, since I installed McAfee there have been 300 or so attempts to capture my pc. How scary is that.

Sarah

bondipom

For an alternative to outlook and internet explorer try www.mozilla.org . I have been trying it at home and firefox at work with great success. It has a built in pop up blocker and google search facility.

JaneandJim

Jim uses Mozilla on his PC but I don't like it. Also, you can't access some sites using it, because they're only written for ie. or Netscape navigator (or whatever its called these days!)

Jane

wombat42

Don't open any email attachment unless you know the person who sent it otherwise it could be a virus.

ABCDiamond

I used to like Norton, when I owned a computer company. We had so many people in to get their systems fixed after installing it.
It was a good earner for us

I never found out why it works well for some people, but not for others.

JaneandJim

Yeah, I know that, but this email implied that it was me who had sent it, and the delivery had failed. I know me!

Jane