virus

[Annie Grieshop]

(I'm jumping in after weeks of not reading -- oh forgive me, but y'all are
just so prolific that it's hard to keep up -- so pardon me if this has
already been discussed.)

Sounds as though someone has the Klez virus on their machine.  If machine A
is infected with Klez, it will go through old mail, grab an address (B) at
random and send itself to the folks in A's address book with B's address in
the From: field.  And I'm pretty sure it's capable of grabbing an address
that was included in a Forwarded message, rather than from the address book,
so you might not have any direct connection with the person whose machine is
infected.

Anyway, that's why you get mail from folks you've never heard of, ranting at
you for sending them infected files.  For more technical info, go to
Symantec's website -- they have tons of info on Klez.  (And it might be
something newer than Klez, which was the first one (as far as I know) to use
that self-replication technique.)

Two ways to track down the real sender, if the person who sent you the angry
email has Outlook and will cooperate:
* double-click on the message to open it in its own window and choose
Options from the View menu at the top of the window
* RIGHT-click on the message's entry in the Inbox folder and choose Options
from the pop-up menu
Either approach will display an "Internet Header" field that shows the route
the message took.  And the first entry in that route is the email of the
person from whose machine it was sent.  That's the person with the virus.

In Outlook Express:
*  if you double-click, then choose "Properties" from the File menu and
click on the Details tab of the window that pops up
*  if you right-click, you'll find "Properties" on the pop-up menu

There'll be something similar for other email programs.  The Mr. 000
approach is pretty useful, but it's even simpler to just not allow your
machine to connect automagically - then you always know what's going on and
what's being sent to whom.  You can be kind to your friends (and their
friends) by deleting all those headers before you forward mail, too -- if
you're using HTML, those addresses are "live" and can be used by anyone who
gets the email.)

Related matter:  I put ZoneAlarm's freeware firewall on my machine a couple
months ago and have been amazed at how often I get "touched" while online.
Pretty weird feeling, knowing that something is checking out my machine.
I'm pleased with the software, and it hasn't apparently interfered with
anything (yet <g>).

Annie