You have probably heard of the computer viruses that will automatically send themselves to everyone in your email address book, there are several different ones out there. If someone opens or clicks a link in one of those emails, they can 'catch' the virus, too. If your computer gets such a virus, there is a way to send yourself an 'alert' so you will know you have it.
Make a new entry in your email address book. For the 'Name', enter "Virus" and for the email address enter "YouHaveAVirus@virus.com". Now if your computer gets a virus that sends itself from your computer, it will also send to the YouHaveAVirus email address. Since there is no such email address, the email will come back to you as undeliverable and you will know your computer has a virus.
By Joy from Fairview Heights, IL
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That sounds so simple it is ingenius!
This is an excellent suggestion which I intend to implement right away! Thanks and God bless you.
This is a good and hopeful idea but sorry, Amuck, this working depends on your ISP and several ISP routing systems involved as to whether you would ever even receive a bounceback to you or not and even if you do receive one some bouncebacks don't come back to you for up to three days when real damage has already been done.
The best defense is a good anti-virus program.
Here's a link regarding various address book virus advice:
www.snopes.com/
I am worried that fellow TF'ers will get a false sense of security that an address in their address book will protect them and fellow recipients with a bounceback alert :-(
Amuck, you're brilliant! Although I believe my AVG Professional affords my computer excellent protection, your suggestion is ingenious. Since my ISP bounces "undeliverables" back within minutes most of the time, I followed your suggestion and now have a virus warning email set up in my Outlook Contacts.
Going to put this to work right now. my undeliverable e-mails come back in less than a minute! Thanks so much, great idea
Please note that I made no claim that a fake email address will remove a computer virus or will prevent the spread of a computer virus. It can only notify you that you have a virus that sends itself to everyone in your address book.
If something other than me is sending an email from my computer, you better believe I want to know about it. Thank you for passing this tip along. :-)
Don't understand? I don't believe that viruses enter my email system with Subject identified as 'virus' and if the email is forwarded, there's certainly nothing that identifies it as a virus. Surely there's something here that I don't see.
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