One Way to Stop E-Mail Viruses

Computer Security

When a worm/virus gets into your computer, it heads right for your email address book so it can start spreading the virus to everyone in it. In turn, it does the same to all of your email address books contacts. Before you know it, we have a huge computer crisis. One trick that is supposed to take care of any virus attack on your email address book is quite simple and could be an extremely helpful tool. If you happen to have more than one email address book from a different email account, do the same procedure for all.

Go to your address book just as if you were going to add a new contact and click on new person or add contact. In the window where you would normally type the first name of your contact, instead type an exclamation point followed by 3 zeroes (!000). In the next window it will ask for your new contact's email address, there you will type in WormAlert. Then just finish it up by clicking add and ok. Because you added an entry of an exclamation point followed by 3 zeroes that entry will go to the very top of your address book.

When a virus goes into your address book it begins with the first entry and works its way down from there. Because the first address is bogus or invalid the mail is simply returned and the virus goes no further. The best news is that you will be notified almost immediately that you had an undeliverable piece of mail so you will know that you have a virus hanging around in your computer.

Another way that computer viruses can attack your computer through the channel of email is when you are sent an email and although you do not know the sender, the subject line is always alluring. It gets your attention usually by tearing at the fiber of the American heart. For example, the subject line might say "World Trade Center" or "Someone has a crush on you", anything that will get your attention with the hopes that you will open it and once you do, there's no turning back. You will have just unleashed a demon through your computer and it will wreak havoc until it is found and eliminated. Of course, the moral to that story is NEVER open an email from someone that you do not know.

Be extremely cautious when opening any email that has an attachment. It could be a virus email scam but it could also come from an infected computer and the person never even knew about it. So unless it is essential, do not open any attachments, especially if they end in EXE, VBS, or SCR. Essentially, treat every attachment as if it were infected. Simply delete the email without ever opening the attachment.

Windows, by default usually hides file name extensions which can allow infected emails to be unrecognized as they may show up as pic.jpg, however, you can go to your Windows express and change the hide options to avoid such a problem.