Address Book Protection

[Guest guest]

I learned a computer trick today that's really ingenious in it's 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:

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 AAAAAAA. In the window below

where it prompts you to enter the new email address, type

WormAlert@.... Then complete the entry by clicking on add, enter, ok,

or whatever word your address book uses.

Now, here's what you've done and why it works:

The " name " AAAAAAA 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, it will be undeliverable

because of the phony email address you've entered (WormAlert@...).

When 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:

Since the email cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your InBox

almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email

addressed to WormAlert@... 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 before it damages your files and system.

If everybody you know does this, then you needn't ever worry about opening mail

from friends. Please pass this on to all the people listed in your address book.