Be careful if you see an email from me.

Since about 6pm last night, I've received a dozen or so "returned mail" notices.)

The returned messages indicate I'm sending a virus-laden message, but I've scanned my PC twice with the most updated McAfee, and it's not finding anything. I'm starting to suspect the "returned mail" messages may be a virus themselves.

But just to be safe, please know that I do NOT send emails with attachments; if anyone gets an email with any attachment from me, treat it like you would any suspicious email and don't open it. I'll be running some more indepth diagnostics later on today :(

It could just be a side effect of the Klez virus on someone else's computer. Some gateway email antivirus scanners will send the virus notification to the "from" address and with Klez, this is almost always NOT the email correct address to notify (Klez usually forges the from address.)

AnnMarie

Good point, Amari. Someone else who has Terry's e-mail address may have sent a virus out under Terry's name.

thanks, Amari and GW - that is a logical explanation, considering that I've scanned EVERYTHING and McAfee was updated just before scanning.

We've foolishly procrastinated on installing a firewall, even though we have two PC's networked here, and the main PC stays online (ISDN) pretty much 24/7. So everytime I get any weird stuff coming through, I'm thrown into a state of paranoia. It doesn't help that our ISP (Prodigy) has "shaky" connectivity (at least one downtime a week since I started keeping track a few months ago); and the road construction about a half-mile from us has created a lot of work for BellSouth to keep our ISDN up and running.

Ah well, I shouldn't complain. I have a PC and probably 95% or better on-demand connectivity. Could be the good old days before the internet (what DID we do back then????)

Ah, for me "before the internet" means BBS and 300 baud modems. Before that it was dialing into the university mainframe over a 150 baud modem to play games like Hack and Advent and of course, email! And before that there was ham radio. I was born into an family of ham radio addicts so I got bit by the technology bug early :)

AnnMarie

LOL, Amari - my parents had one of the first TRS-80 computers (remember those?) My younger brother was quite good at programming in BASIC. (I never quite got the hang of programming, but I had fun playing around with the games he programmed.)

Then I worked in the IS department in the early 90s, when we debated whether the mainframe guys REALLY needed those 9500 baud modems to dial in from home, or if they could "make do" with the 4500s for another year or two.

Ah yes, I remember the TRS-80s. A lot of dad's ham radio friends had those. Dad had the Commodore Vic 20 and when he upgraded to the Commodore C64 he gave the the old Vic to me. Quite a treat since those were the days of eating a lot of rice, beans and tortillas between paydays :) I used that machine to work from home in the evenings and weekends (rather than stay late at the office) for a good 10 years before I finally had to buy a 386 IBM clone because so much stuff at work had moved off the mainframe to PCs and Netware servers.

AnnMarie

Wow, blast from the past! I think the first computers I used were IBM XT's back in 1987-1989 when I was in college. Good old dual floppy boot, DOS and no Windows 3.1 yet, WordStar with its dot commands, way before WSYIWYG. When I got a job and started using Lotus 123 with WSYIWYG I was astounded by how you could enter data on one screen, then go to a new screen and actually format it and see what it looked like...Then have to go back to the other screen to edit your text again.

It wasn't until I worked at the local university in 1994-1996 that I had a computer at home, and it was a hand-me-down 286 I adored. Did the whole BBS thing (some even had color ASCII art on them - wooo!). And I discovered the Internet at that job, going to the computer labs when I was off work or at lunch, surfing the web and searching Yahoo for pictures of dogs and cats. I once got in trouble at work because I subscribed to some LIST-SERV groups about goldfish and got them at my work account.

*Sigh*...Of course, we thought we were getting such a great deal to get a whopping 4mb of RAM for $100 back then, and now we can get 256mb for less than that! LOL, no I sure don't miss those days! Computers just keep getting neater and neater. I just love them!

i am having the same thing..a worm virus has come through my email but i cant trace it.. i think its from DG somwwhere though

someone called
woodenshoe...

so if i have sent it on to any of you.. i am sorry

we keep catching it..but it keeps coming through
someone has it and doesnt know it i think

Hey Terry - hope you have the virus issue resolved by this a.m. We too have had some problem the last couple of weeks with mail with a virus in attachments (from kinfolks no less). However, Norton said it quarantined it and I have scanned my entire system each time and have not found anything after deleting the affected files.

hiya aggiesmom! I've been meaning to reply to your email this weekend - I blinked and the weekend was OVER! I'll send you one today.

Actually I'm still getting the returned mail messages, but at this point, I'm just "riding out the storm" since it doesn't appear to be anything I can fix :(

Morning - don't know if it really works but a friend that is supposed to be a computer genius told me to add the following address to my address book twice:
**!0000
Supposedly, that will keep your computer from sending mail out automatically and should in theory eliminate the problem of unknowingly forwarding mail with viruses attached. Have you ever heard of this?? Wish I could remember more about the information that was with it but oh well.