tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 28 14:28:24 2004
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RE: Anyone else getting flooded?
>
> ngabwI' wrote:
> > This is off topic, but is anyone else getting all these emails
> > from "Ben du Plessis", with this "winmail" attachment? Or is it
> > just me? (I received about 30 in the last hour)
>
> I have removed the source address from the mailing list. Hopefully that
> will stop the flood until Ben figures out he has a virus.
Unfortunately not -- it's probably *NOT* Ben's machine that's infected
at all. Usually these things grab one or more addresses at random out
of your address book and then send themselves to every address in the
address book. Typically, you have to have a Windown Machine and use
Outlook or Outlook Express for your mail client. I get accused of
sending viruses frequently, but I use unix mail as my client and I
read my mail on a FreeBSD machine. My WinXP machine doesn't even have
Outlook on it.
Remember, practice "Safe email."
Do *not* open *any* attachments
**UNLESS** you know the sender,
*AND* you're expecting an attachment from that person,
*AND* the filename of the attachment matches the filename
that you're expecting.
Unfortunately, this doesn't catch all of them. Some of the newer worms
are deposited on computers attached to the web that don't have their
copies of Windows patched to fix the multitude of security holes that
are in it as well. If you're surfing the web, your computer is attached
to the internet. The worm comes into your computer and then goes out
via email.
Susan, the techno-geek, garb junkie and botanist