This is a forwarded message.
Subject: COMPUTER TRICK
This was in the last issue of "P C World" magazine.
Does anyone know if it really works?
Harvey Boots
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" or "new
person"
just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list
of
email
addresses.
Second: 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.
Third: 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.
Pretty slick huh?
If everybody you know does this, then you needn't ever worry
about
opening
mail from friends. Pass this on to your friends.
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