E-mail security?

[corpse]

I will post a thing I saw on the Internet and get your opinions on if it is good or stupid.




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 "AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA".


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.

But, when it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA, 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 to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAAA 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!

[Captain]

Interesting! :icon14:

[Scourge]

Well for one, neither me nor any of my family open anything not familiar and not one worm has developed amongst us. First of all you have to be email smart and not open anything and everything.

[+JuggerNaut+]

I will post a thing I saw on the Internet and get your opinions on if it is good or stupid.




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 "AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA".


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.

But, when it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA, 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 to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAAA 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!

interesting indeed. might recommend that to my friends that use email clients (i don't)

[Survivor]

Unless you have the newer worms which start at the end and count back, or the ones that don't care at all. The only constant positive point is the fact that it notifies you.

[corpse]

Thats kind of what I was thinking. Maybe it would just grab them all and not care [or know] if it was valid until it actually tried sending it.

[Scourge]

Unless you have the newer worms which start at the end and count back, or the ones that don't care at all. The only constant positive point is the fact that it notifies you.

Couldn't you then add one with all z's at the end?

[Underpants?]

This would be a good idea, however, it's working on a premise that the worm/virus/malware sends out emails using your return email address (they usually don't), TO the recipients in your address book (which they also usually don't).
Most newer variants carry a soft-coded list that's prepended with the latest active spam recipient list, and sends the emails out using the infected host's address list as the return recipient address. Slick and depressingly hard to nail down.
Kudos for brainstorming ways to foil these nasty plicks, though.

[Foo]

...Like a worm is gonna wait for an email to be undeliverable before sending to the next person on your list...