Worm Alert

[Guest guest]

Received this from a friend and it makes a lot of sense to me.

Certainly worth a try.

Bert

Subject: Email protection

To protect your E-address

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 !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros). In the

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

WormAlert. (If it tells you this is not a valid address just say yes to add

it, or ok). Then complete everything by clicking add, enter, ok, etc.

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: the " name " !000 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 !000, it will be undeliverable because of the

phony email address you entered (WormAlert). If 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: if an 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!