Virus

If you get an email from me with and attachment, I did not send it and do not even click on it. Just delete it if you can without clicking on it. I got what I think was a virus tonight, and when IE highlighted it, it just autmatically downloaded something. I'm not sure what it was. I'm updating my antivirus now and then I'll know if it was a virus or not. I just updated my antivirus Friday, so if it is a virus, it's a real new one. The email I got came from Blane Sommers. I don't think I know who that is. After I got it, I immediately got another email from myself using one of my saved emails. Subject: There's an eagle (Song) It had an attatchment too, so I'm not sure what's up. I just want you all to have a heads up that this might be happening and I might have gotten a virus that is sending infected emails from my computer. I'm so sorry if anyone gets this from me. If you do, please let me know so I know it's happening. I'm hoping it's a false scare though.
Joan

Thank you so much for a prompt warning. I've had two warnings from symantec and McAfee in the past 24 hours, saying there is a new one beginning the rounds. Good luck and I hope it isn't destructive for you.

Thanks, I will keep a watch!

What site were you at? Was it downloading a .wav file to play a song? Let us know what you find out. Could it have been just some active content on a website, like a clip the site has loaded to play when you go there? Sometimes they download automatically and spawn RealPlayer or Windows Media Player - whatever you have as your default sound player for the file type.

the badtran virus is coming around on Dave's. I've gotten it twice (the email not the virus) it has two attachments, one 'file' and one I think is an mgp, I don't remember for certain. but both were from members here. no blame, just a warning:)

DO NOT OPEN ANY EMAILS FROM ME! It is the badtran virus and I can't seem to get rid of it. I am now going to reformat my hard drive and start over from scratch. I will post again when I get it done. I will also lose any emails I have saved regarding trades, so if you don't hear from me, please send another email to let me know what I am to send you. I need to stop this stupid virus NOW. I've already had several people contact me that I am sending them, and I was afraid of this. The antivirus update takes 14 hours on my computer, and for some reason it says I'm low on memory. I don't know if this is because of the virus or not, as I have lots of memory and the update shouldn't take that long. I don't want to stay up for 14 hours so I am going to reformat my harddrive. I had to do it once before, and it won't take near as long as downloading something without sufficient memory. I think once I reformat, the update will load much faster and I'll be okay then. I'll talk to you all later, but I am going to stop my computer from spreading this.

you're not the only one with it, please don't feel bad. It's getting in through Outlook. Have you tried going to www.mcafee.com and letting it clean your machine for you???? it will do it once on a trial basis!!!!

tiG, Did you let the members know privately that they have a virus in their computer.That will stop it from spreading further. My sister sent me one a year ago and had no idea she had it.She felt very bad that she sent it to me and several others but was very happy that I let her know so she could get rid of it.I have Norton which updates regularly but I am still scared that a brand new virus can sneak in before it has updated for that particular one.

This message was edited Monday, Nov 26th 11:15 PM

I did the second, the first one scared me so bad I didnt' think and deleted it, and I don't have that email address. I tried looking for it. I don't think anyone should feel bad, it happens, I just hate for Joan to have to reformat just to get rid of it, that's so much trouble. Hoping she saw this and can handle it with an online program. I didnt' get it from Joan.

snowhermit, i had the attached email sent to me but just deleted it due to the warning. i did a posting to let the person know. was i wrong in doing that?
i was afraid of emailing privatley for fear of it somehow infecting the people on my email list.
if i was wrong for that im sorry.
jen

Here's the link regarding it: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.badtrans.b@mm.html - That link also shows removal instructions -- You might not have to throw the baby out with the bath, Joan!

This virus is especially sneaky, you guys. I got an infected e-mail from Joan shortly after reading her first post here, but this virus did two things I've not seen on other viruses I've seen arrive in attachments:

Okay, I'm back with a totally clean and reformatted hard drive. I am SO SORRY that I got this virus and spread it. I am going to go sit in the corner now! Please forgive me?

It happened before I could do anything about it and BAM! it sent tons of emails to anyone I have been in contact with. I feel so so bad. Using outlook express, once you highlight an email, even if you are just going to delete it, this virus downloads. I DID update my antivirus on Friday, the 23rd. I do it weekly. But, the update for this particular virus wasn't released until the 24th. So, I still missed it. I try to keep on top of things, I really do, this one just caught me.

I chose to reformat my hard drive so I could stop my computer from spreading this anymore than I already have. I lost all my email addy's from you all. I lost all my favorite garden sites, bible study sites, and everything.

I did throw out the baby with the bathwater gardenwife, along with the soap, washcloth, rubber ducky and all. But, that was preferable to me than continuing to spread the disease. If anyone would care to send me some links to their favorite garden and bible sites, I would be forever greatful. Along with your email addy's if we have been corresponding. I also lost some of my trade info that I hadn't gotten put into my trade tracker yet. If I am to send you something and you haven't heard from be since about 6 PM MST tonight, please email me again.

Joan (tucking her tail between her legs and begging at the door to go outside and run away)

Joan. Norton anti-virus captured it twice from another trader before it came in,so no damage done here. Seems like it is the time for another one to hit garden sites, remember how many people got hit with Snow White a while ago?
I will send you some garden sites. It is not your fault, the creeps that start these have headstarts on the rest of us, so if we all pull together , we can get you connected up with a lot of goodies again. So no going into the corner, unless it is in a rocker with a good book and hot cocoa. Hugs Marcia

Oh, Joan, you are way to hard on yourself. I can't tell you how many people got Happy99 from me, and I opened it twice and crashed two computers before I had a clue. Talk about dumb! You got it cleaned up in record time, I think. If there is anything I can do to help you with your links, just let me know. We didn't have any correspondence going, just a wild ride on a bobcat. Come on over to Jokes and Chat, see Cooooooeeeee, and play to let off the tension. The password, of course, is Shazam.

Joan, I agree, you are being way too hard on yourself. But there is a way to use Outlook Express without downloading things. Not using it, so I'm trying to recall, I think Edit>current view
Somebody help me out here, help her to turn off the preview pane.

I also received the virus at 7:03 this morning. I don't know who it was from since it was picked up by Norton as soon as I clicked on the e-mail.The name it gave for the e-mail was Gary Valkenaar and the subject line was "seeds".I could'nt get into the properties to see where it originated from. It could not be repaired and was put in isolation.
After a virus is put into isolation is there a way to get rid of that virus completely or does it just sit in isolation forever????

I received it from here too. I opened it before I realized what I was doing. I know my computer sent out several because a few emailed me while I was trying to clean the files. I've updated my virus protection ( I thought I had the patch from MS and wouldn't get this again). I'm going to have to delete system restore to completely get this off my machine, but at least it's out of all the other files. So sorry if I caused any one any problems.

Here's a tip for future email virus'... It won't stop you from getting them but it will stop the spread.
In your address book in Outlook, add a new contact with the name !00000 with no email address attached.
When the virus trys to send itself out, this is the first addy in your list. It will get stuck on that one and the rest will stay in your outbox indefinately. You can then clean your system and then delete the emails in your outbox.

i ad a emal fro joan this morning it said xmas exchange-so dumb m tried to open it! It as a download file-and i downloaded i and the tried to open it-it wouldnt open.
i ran a virus scan-had to renew my subscription for mcaffee, as my trial period endeda week agao! it says im free and clear-should i do anything else?
dori

Gwydion

The !00000 doesn't stop virii getting out but it does limit the spread a little. Not all address books work that way, look it up on Snopes.com for the full details.

Joan you aren't the only one I've received 3 emails from DG's this morning with attachments (no I didn't open them) and 2 from other sources all witht he same strange email address _.

i just got another one-deleted it as soon as i saw it

i just got another too....thank you sooooo much for the advance warning!!!
jen

Thanks Gwydion,just did it in my book' Gonna check it out Baa,whew glad I checked in here this morning' Hope for us all to keep on top of these virus'

Before y'all go reformatting your hard drive, go to SARC.com http://www.sarc.com/ (Symantec, makers of Norton Anti-Virus) and follow the instructions for removing various viruses from your system. They often list free fixes for you to download. You don't necessarily have to lose everything and start over. Give 'em a look before ya format! :o)

Thanks GW'' Will do'

Another send me virus did not open it it was from mary davision think from new orleans oh my goodness what the hell the virus and really upset me not know what it keep doing this at DG how it coming from??? Hope they will do soemthing to clean up to rid of it hate to see when i open email stanger come out blank not say what just see their email address that was it and other said window media not trust to open it up so anyone has like this too like mine?

Well, one thing's for sure: It's not just up to the webmasters of the world to prevent the problem, it's up to us.

People continue to use these Microsoft e-mail products knowing full well they are very vulnerable to many types of security breaches. There are many free text-based e-mail programs available in addition to the Pegasus Mail I've mentioned (Pegasus allows HTML in e-mails, but does not allow the HTML to cause something to be downloaded when you open it).

Think about it this way:

You have a car which periodically has its wheels fall off. The manufacturer issues recalls with some fixes for this wheel problem, but you know these fixes don't always work. It's common knowledge that things like road conditions and temperatures, even the radio station you listen to, can render these fixes useless and endanger you.

But you still drive the car.

The car probably just effects you, unless the wheels roll somewhere and cause others to wreck. There are lots of other cars out there which don't have this problem. They're not the number one sellers with the big ad budgets, but they're great cars with all the features you enjoy with yours.

Unlike the car, these computer viruses effect thousands of indivual users and corporate servers -- And cost the economy billions in lost business revenue and clean-up. It's up to individual users to use anti-virus software, keeping it updated all the time. And to not open executable file attachments (ending in .pif, .scr, .exe, .bat, etc.) they were not expecting. To educate themselves, if not others.

Stepping off soapbox now. ;-)

GW... yes true so just not understand why and happen like this and glad they are working on it to clean up and today nothing happen hope it is over.

GW, you made my day - I can just see my PC's wheels rolling about and hitting people! :-) Now if I could convince our 700 employees to either install & use virus protection and OR not use outlook...

LOL, Kmom -- you know, those iMac's are pretty round and they might roll out in front of people. Oh, wait -- we don't use the Mac!!

hey guys, this in no way has anything to do with Dave's Garden, except that this is how we started emailing each other. The virus isn't coming through Dave's and he can't stop it. Just in case anyone misunderstands, it's like GW says, it's a Microsoft problem, and the person who made the virus is the one to blame. Just be careful and this too will pass:)

Tig is right
I've gotten emails with it from all over today. I know to delete them now :) The pet store next to the green house had it too and he's definitely not a gardener, lol. Another friend sent it to me, she doesn't come to DG either. This one seems to be really widespread and fast moving.

For the record, I received a message from my ISP, and this has happened once before with nimbda, that I had been sent the virus and they had removed it before it could cause any further trouble. It was from a DGer, and I attempted to fwd. the message to her, not sure if she got it. It hasn't been returned.

That's probably what happened with Peapod's e-mails. Her ISP probably removed the attached files before they got to her, so all she was left with was the blank e-mail.

I'm not sure I'd want my ISP to filter some things. I know they're just trying to cut down on the spread of virii and/or spam, but they can go overboard. For instance, a while back, I sent a friend information about a virus currently circulating the web and it was refused by her ISP, presumably because I had the virus name in my text. I purposely misspelled it (and told her so) and re-sent it. That time it went through. That's a little extreme for an ISP to do, I think.

I was wondering what was going on...........I have gotten several of these e-mails from Dg'ers and others, but as always, if I have no clue what something is and there is no text in the mail, I just delete it. One was called me_nude.mp3.scr and came with JoanJ's e-mail..........my first thought........what in the world!!! x-rated from here!!! what's going on!!!.........I deleted it, then I got more from others and thought something must be wrong. Guess I was right.........thank god

HaHa, hope y'all weren't looking to see pictures of me nude!! One friend got one from me that said Me fat, how rude of someone to write a program like that!! A deacon at our church got one from me that said pictures of me nude, I about died when he told me that. He didn't open it (I would know, he would have the worm/virus)

Susan - you bring up a GREAT point. When you look at a file name, be sure you look at the LAST part of it after the last period. In the instance of me_nude.mp3.scr, someone could glance at it and think it is a harmless mp3 music file...If they didn't notice it then says .scr! The scr extension is a screensaver, which is an executable file, a program file.

I have received attachments from infected computers with file names like kitty.jpg.exe attached to them. Again, it might at first look like a harmless jpg picture file, but there's more beyond the .jpg in that file name.

If your e-mail program has adjustable columns in the window allowing you to see the attached file names, make SURE it is dragged over so you see the entire file. Also, it sure doesn't hurt to have your system set up to show the file extensions on ALL files when you're looking in folders. That way, kitty.jpg.exe doesn't just show up as kitty.jpg on your screen.

I agree this is wide spread I have gotten several emails but none of them where from DG as a matter of fact most of mine have came from Ebay.But it can come from anywhere. Thanks all for all the great advice what to do if you get it and what other place could you find such a good support team...... Joan and Cala I am glad you got everything fixed. (((hugs))) I know that was a nightmare.

Oy Vay!!!! It said I sent you a nude pic of me Flowox? Now that would be one very scary picture! LOL! That would even make the virus look good in comparison. Hee Hee!

Thanks everyone for all the support and consideration. I was very upset that this happened, but now I know that I'm not the only one that had the problem. It's just spreading so very fast.

Now I'm on to the next problem, how to make dumplings! I like that problem much better I think.

Joan

Hi guys, igot an email today from Busybee - , it was blank except for the subject "reCeres trade", which I had traded with her about a month ago. It had 2 attachments which I couldn't open. One was a pif, the other was a note pad. I tried to reply telling her I couldn't open it and it came back saying user unknown. Was this the virus?