Virus

I received an email from [email protected] also known as Larry Foster this afternoon with a strange subject and attachment. He confirmed it as a virus. I checked with him before opening and therefore did not infect my computer. Be on the lookout.

I also got the email... there was nothing in it that would infect a computer, just a stupid "spam-scam"... the old drivel about Microsoft and Intel doing an email test and sending out checks to participants. There were no malicious attachments. I opened it up, read it, and replied to Larry, telling him (if he didn't know) that it was just an example of useless drivel that takes up bandwidth (I thought he had forwarded it... sorry Larry!). It is right to be cautious about strange email, though, and ALSO to have GOOD protection not only from a virus scanner (with up-to-date virus definitions, ALWAYS...) but ALSO a good firewall program that renames attachment files in email if they could be executable (thereby protecting you from "instant-run" viruses).

Tim

Heh.. the old joke was that the emails WERE the virus. People would get all upset over (or excited about) them and pass them on to a few hundred friends.

In the case of real virus laden messages, they might have come from a computer belonging to someone not listed on the From line. A computer gets infected, the virus looks through the hard drive and finds a list of addresses. It proceeds to send copies of itself to all those addresses, using one or more of them as the "From" address. So the "sender" of the message is not necessarily the owner of the infected machine.

I got it, too, but Outlook Express stripped the attachment before I even read the message. This would be neat, but Outlook Express also strips attachments with .pdf, .wmv and .sml extensions!

This action just started a few weeks ago, and I'm not sure how; or how to shut it off.

Go to "Tools... Options" in the menu, then in the box that opens, click on the "Security" tab. One of the options you will see is "Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus." Note that Outlook Express doesn't actually STRIP attachments, it merely PREVENTS them from executing. If a message arrives with no attachment, it's because no attachment was sent. If you want to disable this security option in Outlook Express, make sure you have a good firewall program that will perform the same function (renaming attachments to prevent them from executing).

Tim

LAST EDITED ON Aug-21-04 AT 07:42 AM (CDT)
 
Is this Larry Foster 'one of us' ?
I wonder how i got on his mailing list...
Norvald Olsvold

He's an engine specialist, all-round great guy, and, yes, he's "one of us"...

Tim

Freak

Gooble Gobble Gooble Gobble
One of us, One of us

Well.. I have Antivirus installed, so id did not harm me.
As it was not intentional, no hard feelings.
(The American company i am working for is also one of the largest vendors of antivirus software on the market.)
Norvald Olsvold