Why you're getting unwanted emails from folks who swear they're not sending them to you. (4/27/04)

If your receiving unwanted emails from "people" rather than the fake addresses normally used, it is helpful to know two things:

1. It is possible for a virus to hide on your computer and send out emails as you. Run an anti-virus program like Norton Anti-virus, run an anti-spyware program like Ad-Aware, and run a firewall of some kind to prevent this from happening. The firewall is especially important. Do you lock the door to your house? Then why not lock the door to your computer too? And please, PLEASE stop downloading documents from your email that your not expecting! That's how you get viruses in the first place!

2. Starting in 2000 or so, virus authors began writing viruses that would search a person's hard drive for email addresses and mail the virus to those people, pretending to be the person with an infected computer. It was easy to track down who was responsible and clean their computer with the items in section 1. So if you're an aspiring miscreant, how would ensure your viruses live on?

Yes! Take any two of the email addresses you've found and start sending fake emails:

Woodward thinks Rice is at fault, Rice thinks Woodward is lying, and Bush is blissfully unaware of the problem he's caused.*

Given the number of email addresses on people's computers (think of the long list of email addresses on the last chain mail you got), it's not going to be terribly easy to track down the original sender. They may very well be a friend of a friend of a friend! So follow the items in section 1, delete the email, and stop depending on stupid sites like this to educate yourself! In your daily read, give 60 seconds to:

http://slashdot.org/
http://www.aldaily.com/
http://scitechdaily.com/

And if you get an email your in doubt about, copy a fairly unique sentence from it and Google it. You'll be amazed at how many people will be talking about it. This applies to possible Urban Legends as well!

* Note: Parallels to reality are completely unintentional.

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