Jack,
I personally have not verified this either way, but I've received another
e-mail today stating that this is a hoax. Copied from the other message:
<quote>
There is another bogus message floating around the Net informing you
that if you create a fake "!0000" or "0000" contact in your email
address book you can prevent your computer from spreading Internet
viruses (actually, "worms") to all of your friends and colleagues.
Yeah, right. THIS DOESN'T WORK, FOLKS! There are a BUNCH of reasons
why this doesn't work, most of which are discussed in a wonderful
article at
http://antivirus.about.com/library/weekly/aa082801b.htm
<end quote>
Just thought I'd add a conflicting point of view,
Ron Jobe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack D. Rees" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2001 6:36 PM
Subject: [PCSOFT] Slick Trick
Worth a try...........
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.
NOTE: This is not a foolproof trick, but it works in most cases.
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 name 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. You system will probably tell you that this is not a valid email
address and ask if you want to enter it anyway....say yes.
Then complete everything by clicking save, 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 the email address WormAlert, 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 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!
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