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chicot60
01-31-2011, 04:46 AM
I don't know if this actually works. If someone with computer expertise can weigh in on this it would be beneficial to the members. I got this from a friend.

How to protect your e-mail address book

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 [email protected]
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 [email protected] ,
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 [email protected] 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 need not ever worry about opening mail from friends.

SFTester
01-31-2011, 05:16 PM
Interesting. You asked for opinions. My opinion would be that this is nonsense. Someone smart enough to write a virus is smart enough to send to all entries in your address book. It will not stop at the first one that fails. Not only that, why would it stop at all? It just sends out emails. You, yourself, can send out an email to a bogus email address! You don't even know that it is a bogus address until you get a response that says "undeliverable". So, I vote for "this is nonsense".

chicot60
01-31-2011, 09:28 PM
So, I vote for "this is nonsense".
I belief you are right. I checked this out with snopes and they agree with your opinion. I should have checked with snopes before actually posting.

wildman25
01-31-2011, 09:40 PM
Guess it would give you an idea that something is up when you get the delivery failed message?
Probably be too late though- so it's best to just update your anti-virus and not open forwards or mail from those you don't know IMHO