This may be of help: From the U.S. Dept.of Energy, CIAC website (Computer Incident Advisory Cabability), www.ciac.org/ciac Here is a very helpful tip concerning worm viruses you could get in an email: As you may know, 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 tip won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread itself further, and it will alert you to the fact that a worm virus has gotten into your system. Here's what you do: 1. Open your address book and add a "New Contact" just as you would do if you were adding someone to your list of email addresses; 2. In the window where you would type your contact's first name, type !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros); 3. In the box where you would enter the email address, type WormAlert; 4. Click Add; 5. Then, click OK. Now, here's what you've done and why it works: The name !000 will appear at the top of your email list as entry number: A. This is the first email address a worm virus will find when it tries to send all of your friends a virus infected email. But because the 1st email address is invalid, it will be undeliverable, and the worm virus stops any further attempts to access your address book. B. The second advantage of this tip is that you will be notified when an email cannot be delivered because of an invalid email address. You will receive an email telling you that your email to "WormAlert" could not be delivered. If you get this message, you'll know right away that you've got a worm virus in your system. You can then take the appropriate steps to get rid of it. Just knowing that you even have a virus is half the battle.

Thanks for the tip Jan and it is a good idea to do that ,,,,, BUT ,,,, don't count on it stopping all email sent out by a virus. Some of them have their own SMTP server and do not use your email client at all and some of them can gather address' from your "Temporary Internet Files" folder, this is where Windows stores web pages you visit, HTML documents and other information it uses in going about its' business. Some virus' use the entire address book and some do not, some start at the top of the address book and some do not., some get address' from unopened email still in your Inbox. So, as you can see, every little bit helps but the best is not to get infected in the first place. Bob Hays WALDROP-L List Owner rhays@galvestonbay.net ________________________________ ---- Original Message ---- From: <JanDawson@aol.com> To: <WALDROP-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2002 1:00 AM Subject: Re: [WALDROP] VIRUS Alert > This may be of help: > > From the U.S. Dept.of Energy, CIAC website (Computer Incident Advisory > Cabability), www.ciac.org/ciac > > Here is a very helpful tip concerning worm viruses you could get in > an email: > > As you may know, 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 tip won't > keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it > from using your address book to spread itself further, and it will > alert you to the fact that a worm virus has gotten into your system. (snip)