Are You Getting Error Reports About E-mail You Never Sent?

The complaints are rampant

Have you found yourself plagued lately by e-mail messages like:
“Returned Mail – the message you sent contained a virus!”
“Delivery Error – Your e-mail was infected with the SoBig Virus”
“Warning – Norton detected a virus in the attachment you sent to somebody@some_stranger.com

If you think you do not deserve messages like that, you are probably correct. With the recent amount of viruses infecting people’s computers, a tremendous number of messages are getting sent from infected computers to other people, and the offending e-mails are being disguised to appear that they came from you.

That’s right – you didn't send the message, another computer sent the message, but yours is the return address that other computer used. So, when a “receiver” detects the virus, they naturally tell you about it, thinking you are the one who sent the e-mail.

I even got a message from an angry recipient the other day that thought I was sending him “My Details.” He was understandably upset, just upset at the wrong person.

What can you do?

The best thing to do is realize you can't do a whole lot, except to BE SURE your computer is free of viruses. To accomplish that, there are three things you need to do:

First, that means you make sure you have your anti-virus software up to date with the latest signatures. It is a good idea to configure your anti-virus software to update itself automatically once a day. Make sure you perform a system-wide virus scan at least once a week, and leave the “automatic protection” features turned on. If you don’t have an anti-virus program yet, then I suggest Norton Anti-Virus (and if you want a personal firewall to keep hackers out of your computer, a bargain is to buy NIS – Norton Internet Security because it comes with both Norton Anti-Virus and a firewall program.) Find information on these tools at http://www.symantec.com/

Second, be sure to be going to Microsoft’s Windows Update section and being sure you have all the latest patches for Windows. You will find the updates by clicking here: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

Third, if you are using any Microsoft Office products (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc) then you also need to be going to Microsoft Office Update. Find these updates at http://office.microsoft.com/productupdates

If your office is using other Microsoft products such as SQL Server, or Exchange Server, updates for those products can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/

Some day, everyone will have good anti-virus tools on their computer and the viruses will be stopped. Until that time, be sure to tell your associates to protect themselves.

Posted by Mike Foster in Previous e-Savvy Newsletters on Jun 1, 2004.