Brewmaniac

I got this from a friend and don't know if it really works or if it's bogus.

Any input would be appreciated.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ADDRESS BOOK!
I learned a computer trick today that's really
ingenious in its simplicity. 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
attem pt 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!

Pretty slick huh?

If everybody you know does this then you need not
ever worry about opening mail from friends.

__________________
"That's a joke... I say, that's a joke, son"

shakran

it would be a pretty stupidly written worm that would wait for delivery confirmation of each email before sending another. No, I'd bet just about anything that this won't work.

The only thing it could possibly do is, if enough people get a trojan that emails from your address book, it would clog servers which are bouncing craploads of reject emails.

If you want to protect your address book, install a good virus scanner and don't open suspicious attachments.

Cynthetiq

by the time you got the email it's too late...

__________________
I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

Brewmaniac

I smelled B.S. but didn't know for sure, usually if something has been Fwd: Fwd: FW: = Crap.

Thanks for confirming what I thought.

__________________
"That's a joke... I say, that's a joke, son"

ratbastid

If I'm sending mail on my ISP's SMTP server (which is the case for probably 99% of home users), the server will likely accept the message and queue it for delivery long before checking the validity of the To: address. Once that message rises to the top of the queue, the domain aaa.aaa will fail to resolve and the message will bounce, but the email trojan would never have any way of knowing that.

Dilbert1234567

sounds like BS, its a waste of clock cycles to send to 1 and wait, viri would send to all of them in rapid succession, not waiting for a response.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

spindles

further, a virus won't necessarily use your email address as the "from" address, so there is no guarantee that you'd get a bounce message anyway.

__________________
who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

soopafreek

super fake!

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/quickfix.htm

__________________
aaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!

dnd

rather than put aaa@aa.com why not put your own email address in there... or put an invalid address aaa@@cec.com or something. Would expect any app to throw up an error when attempting to send an email to this invalid address.

__________________
"Never underestimate a dumb question"-- Brandon Boyd

kurty[B]

Or even better, keep your PC patched and antivirus up to date, and be wary of what you click on.