Protect your Adress Book

To protect your E-address:

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 !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by * zeros). In
the
window below where it prompts you to enter the new email address,
type in
WormAlert. (If it tells you this is not a valid address just say yes
to add
it, or ok). 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 #*. 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!
I went a step further by doing the same thing only to have the WormAlert
show at the end (last) of my address book as well in case the creator of
the virus programs the virus to start in reverse order in my address book.
I used name ZZZ000 and an e-mail address WormAlert2..........

HI,



i read a news paper extract on this but i remember them actually show that this trick wont work.
the bad part is that i will have to look for that paper which i dont think i ll find.but be forwarned not to use this trick.the details i dont remember as i just ******* through it.:( I know this is not ********* and what u want.Cant help it.

this really does sound like a good idea on the surface, and it can be helpful in al least one way. if having the invalid address helps you to realize you're infected, you can take care of the problem more quickly on your own computer. but, past that, it really doesn't do a lot of good. I also read a very well written article about why this is the case, and, also... can't seem to locate it. i found one web article that did address this a bit, though.
here's the url: [url]http://antivirus.about.com/library/weekly/aa08280*b.htm[/url]

basically, most worms wouldn't fail at the first address, then quite, but would simply skip that address, and continue with the rest. very likely as well, is that the virus would send to random accounts in your address book, and probably never even try the invalid "!0000" account.

HI,

thanx pal,thats what i read too :)
A hearty welcome to this forum,paco.