How to protect your Email account

rondetto

Protect your Address Book

How to protect your e-mail address book

This is a good thing. I learned a computer trick today that's really ingenious in its simplicity.

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,' just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email
addresses.

In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in 'A'...

For the screen name or email address, type [email protected]

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: The 'name 'A' 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.

When it tries to send itself to [email protected], it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered. 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 In Box almost immediately.

Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to [email protected] AAA 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 need not ever worry about opening mail from friends. From Ron.

barbara12

Oh Ron...that is so clever, the simple things are the best..I am going to give it a go...Thanks for sharing it.
Barbara x

rondetto

Thanks Babs, it will stop any infections getting through in an Email.

marion1952

Thanks Ron

Marion

trisher

O dear now I'm confused

Trish xxx

livinglegend

delboy wrote:

Sorry Ron but this a hoax that's been around for a few years now, check out snopes to see what's real or not.

You are quite right delboy, this is a hoax that has been around since August 2001.

Viruses don't stop because one address in your book is undeliverable, firstly because they don't read the reply that an email has bounced. But there are many reasons why this idea won't work. More at http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/quickfix.asp to firmly squash this one.

Joseph 8)

frogmorton

Thanks Ron for that

I will certainly do it.

I also have AAAA in my mobile phone - stops me from ringing the first person in my add book when I sit on the phone!

Love

Toni xx