If you get an email from me, don't open it

I just found out that my email address has sent a virus to some people. I scanned and checked, but I do not have the virus. I think this was a case of the virus picking my email addy from someone else's computer and using it in the from line. Don't know how that works.

I'm hoping this is a one shot deal.

Bummer Joan, it makes me crazy to think of these people having nothing better to do with their time than write virus'. They need a new hobby, like gardening ;-)

joan don't worry about sending mail to me, my machine scans everything incoming and will tell me if its infected!!!!

If you're up to date on antivirus software and it shows no viruses, it may well be you don't even have one. Many viruses pick a random e-mail address from the infected person's address book and plunk it in the "reply-to" or "from" field of the e-mail, making it look as though that person sent it.

Kimberley, I'm pretty sure that's what happened. My Norton's is up to date and automatically downloads updates. I've scanned and nothing comes up,so I'm pretty confident that I don't have a virus.

Forgot to ask this. I've been looking for a site that scans your computer free, but doesn't download a program? I thought I read about it a while ago, and now I'm looking but not finding. The reason I'm looking for this is that I think I read that Norton's won't continue to work if you download another antivirus?

There are viruses that disable your antivirus so I'm wondering? My Norton's seems to be working. When I do live update it tells me that all my definitions and such are current. When I do a scan it tells me that there's no viruses. When I send an email it shows me that it's scanning it prior to sending. So....I am fairly confident that all is well, but there's still a little nagging at the base of my concience that is making me check into this further.


This message was edited Aug 30, 2004 9:24 PM

There are several online scanners -- TrendMicro's is good. Here's some hits, including theirs and some other legimate ones in the first few results: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=online+virus+scan

I looked at TrendMicro's site earlier but was unsure because I hadn't heard of it before. Now that you say it's a good one I'm going to look at it again. Thanks.

I have used Trend Micro, and think it is the best. When my free trial with Norton is over on my new computer, I will be re-subscribing to pc-cilllin. Here is the site, I think...

http://www.pc-cillin.com

yes, that is the link

thanks for letting everyone know! Hope you are well

Tamara

Well, I found the culprit, hidden deep within. I have no idea how it came to be on my computer, but after doing many AV downloads and online scans, there it was. My up-to-date Norton's was somewhat disabled by this worm as it appears, therefore couldn't detect it. The funny part was, I couldn't tell that Norton's wasn't working. I could scan, download updates and such, but it wasn't finding it. It did appear to be doing what it's supposed to do though.

The worm I had was WORM_BAGLE.Z

Trend-Micro finally found it.

No idea where it came from. It got through my firewall and antivirus unknown to me.

But, it's gone from my system now.

Thanks for all the help.

One of the problems with some modern viruses is that they send emails for the host computer, but put a header on that makes it look like they came from somewhere else. A few months ago in work I got some irate replies and some warnings from webmasters about a virus attachment that I was meant to have sent, but the individuals to whom it was sent weren't known to me and certainly weren't in my address book...

Wouldn't you like to strangle the nirks who write these things. 'Aren't I clever, I can make your computer malfunction...?' Answer: No, your judgement is terminally flawed and if that is all you can do with your able brain, better commit suicide!