be careful!

xok85xo · #1 01-24-2003, 07:45 AM

I've been using the internet for over 10 years, and this is the first time this has ever happened to me. this morning I checked my email, and had received an email virus. LUCKILY Norton Anti-Virus caught it and quarantined it before it infected my computer. If you use outlook, or any other program that has a preview window be careful about opening any attachments, especially if you don't know who the sender is. Once the message is clicked on its kind of hard to get past the popup window asking what you want to do w/the attachment(save or open from current location) and obviously I DIDN'T want to open it

. I was able to delete it from my inbox, but the same thing kept happening when i went into my trash bin. I think i quarantined the virus 4 or 5 times, and finally went online into my hotmail and deleted it there(i use outlook to check my hotmail). Just a headsup, I can only imagine what could have happened had I not had an awesome virus scan program..

-Kate

SATX*APhi · #2 01-24-2003, 01:31 PM

Thanks for the head up. I genereally don't open e-mails from people that I don't know, but sometimes the subjects are so tricky I think it may be someone from class or something. I think there should be some governing body that we could report all these e-mails to. Of course I know that would be impossible, but I receive just as much junk mail as I do regular e-mail. It gets on my nerves!

SATX*APhi · #3 01-24-2003, 01:34 PM

Oh, one more thing I just thought of. Signing guestbooks and putting my e-mail address turned out to be a bad idea. I didn't realize that anybody could do a google search for "@aol.com, @msn.com, etc" and get tons of e-mail addresses.

texas*princess · #4 01-24-2003, 01:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by SATX*APhi
Oh, one more thing I just thought of. Signing guestbooks and putting my e-mail address turned out to be a bad idea. I didn't realize that anybody could do a google search for "@aol.com, @msn.com, etc" and get tons of e-mail addresses.

good advice there SATX!

Also want to always be sure you have the latest virus definitions from Norton or McAfee!

chideltjen · #5 01-24-2003, 04:24 PM

here's a weird story...

i have actually gotten large emails (like 120K and up) from people that I know... generally sisters. When I open them, there is nothing there, so I wonder what is taking up 120K? Also, since I have yahoo, these strange emails go to my bulk mail even tho they have an entry in my address book...

ANYWAY... i emailed one of the girls that i got this strange email from. She emailed me back and said she didn't email me but her computer had contracted a virus from MY email address. Now... norton is up to date and usually tells me if something fishy is going on. There were no viruses on my computer at the time of the email.

Anyone had his happen?

aephi alum · #6 01-24-2003, 05:19 PM

In Outlook, there is a way to turn off the preview pane. I highly recommend doing so - just previewing a message can activate some viruses.

A company I used to work for used Outlook for email, and we got hit with viruses ALL THE TIME... they crashed the mail servers a couple of times.

And I hear you on the spam... Somehow I got on a mailing list in Asia somewhere. I can't read the text, but the pictures make it quite clear what they're advertising (usually cars or porn). And if there's an opt-out link at all, it goes to an invalid email address.

I have filters set up to send this cr@p straight to the trash, where it belongs.

japhir · #7 01-24-2003, 06:23 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by chideltjen
here's a weird story...

i have actually gotten large emails (like 120K and up) from people that I know... generally sisters. When I open them, there is nothing there, so I wonder what is taking up 120K? Also, since I have yahoo, these strange emails go to my bulk mail even tho they have an entry in my address book...

ANYWAY... i emailed one of the girls that i got this strange email from. She emailed me back and said she didn't email me but her computer had contracted a virus from MY email address. Now... norton is up to date and usually tells me if something fishy is going on. There were no viruses on my computer at the time of the email.

Anyone had his happen?

You got the klez worm. Norton has a worm finder tool on their website. Use it to scan your computer and remove the culprit. The worm attaches it self to your email application and sends itself out to everyone in your address book. Let any friends that contact you about it know not to open it and to run the worm finder. I didn't have anti-virus software on my home desktop (I'm work with computers all day, so I know how stupid this was). It had so many worms on it, that I couldn't even install anti-virus software. I had to reformat the whole hard drive, which means I lost everything that I hadn't already saved on disks. If you don't already have anti-virus software, spend the $50 and get it. It's a good investment.

wishinhopin · #8 01-24-2003, 08:21 PM

Last year I got this horrible virus that would take documents of mine and attatch itself to them. Then, it would mail it out to people. Seems simple enough right? Well not only did it send it out to anyone I had ever emailed or received an email from, but also anyone who's email address had ever been on computer (ie any email address on any webpage that may have popped up, or pages that I visited). Several greekchat members got very angry with me when my computer infected theirs. Beyond that, it sent my documents out to random universities, US military institutions, and major international corporations. I got an email from (among other places) the Naval Academy, the Air Force, several state schools in the South, Disney, and Tylenol corporate- all of whom let me know that, while they appreciated receiving my Lit101 essay/NBO Constitution/Personal Poetry/Online diary entries, they had gotten a virus from me and I could I please not contact them anymore. It was actually pretty funny in retrospect. Thank god Norton finally got rid of it....

juniorgrrl · #9 01-25-2003, 02:33 AM

Do NOT use Outlook. Its a horrible, buggy piece of trash. What else could we expect from Microsoft?

I *highly* recommend Eudora as an email program. Eudora light is free and its a great alternative. Plus, it lacks all those nasty security holes that Outlook has - like the ones that automatically launch VB scripts (like the Melissa virus).

For those of you who are on campus networks, go into the sharing properties of your computer and make sure that no one has access to write to your hard drive. If someone on your network has a worm, it can put files on your computer to infect you. When I was on LSU's network, someone had a worm that would put different files with a .eml extension on my drive. Outlook would have opened those as an email and then I would have been infected too.

Outlook Bad!

Fewdfreak · #10 01-25-2003, 06:19 AM

Always remember to update your virus scan, and to scan files, especially ones that sound funny, they have creative names, and some use things like 'nortonupdate.exe' to trick you, and things like mypicjpg.exe, but usually you can tell, espeically if you get like an .exe file from someone who doesn't usually send you one, or an exe file made to look like something else. Some worms get in your addy book, but if you follow steps you can usually successfully delete these from your registry. My dad didn't update his virus program, and last year I was transfering my data from his computer to my new one, and luckily my computer picked it up, but it was a nastly little virus, and impossible to get rid of, so had to reformat because Norton needed to delete infected files, which were essential Windows files, so it wouldn't even load.

I have a great verson of Symantec/Norton, but I hate them. They charge you tons of money every year just to protect from new viruses, and it's essential because new stuff comes up everyday.

If you have a virus a great place for removal instructions is mcafee.com, they also have a great virus listing database.