For the past several weeks, I have about twice a week been getting these weird little emails in the account I use for these forums. They have no information in the message, but take up a whole lot of space anyway?! Sometimes the name is not familiar, but sometimes it is. This morning I got one which says it is 122k long, but this is the entire thing:

Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 03:37:50 -0400 (EDT)

From: "CeltiaSkye" | Block Address | Add to Address Book To: earthmama48@yahoo.com Subject: CONTROLS

Now obviously I know Sherri isnt doing this, and I've gotten others made to look like they came from other folks I know.

I have Norton and a firewall, but the new Norton was installed just recently,and hasnt seemed to have any effect on the pattern of these weird emails. Can anyone offer me some advice?

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

Answers

EM, if I was even awake at 3:37am today it was only to chase down a cat that was making the hairball noise, not to email you. :) I don't have you in my address book, your address is pretty easy to remember. Also, I usually email from my computer at work and they have all sorts of anti-virus and firewall stuff to certify that outgoing messages are clean. So I don't think that it's me.

I got a weird one last week which looked like it was from Joy at her CatFlunky address. I didn't open it.

This new virus is hard to backtrack because it pulls an address out of your address book to use as the sender when it replicates. So for example, if I had the virus on my computer it might send a message to diane that looked like it was sent by Joy, because both of those addresses are in my address book.

Keith is pretty good about keeping the virus definitions updated on our home computer but I'll update and scan again tonight just to be sure.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

I got an email this morning from tigger@moultrie.com. It came in at 3:42 a.m. It had an x-midi attachment with it...which just happens to be a type of attachment webtv can't use. I KNOW it wasn't from Polly, though!! It wont affect my setup since I can't get viruses. A few weeks ago I got a email supposedly from Jay Blair and Alison got a similar one supposedly from me! It seemed to be an advertisement for a furniture decorating site...or something like that. It was a legit site...I googled it and found some info about it. I think someone just grabbed a bunch of email addresses from some of these Lusenet forums and was trying to sell a product! But I really don't know if what I got this morning was a virus or not...I just deleted it!

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

Wierd stuff, huh? The really odd thing about these ones I'm getting is there is no information in them at all......but they are telling me they take up a whole bunch of space! So if I got a whole mess of em at once, they'd probably eat up all my mailbox space. There are no attachments involved.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

I got an inquiry from Trennie about a supposed email from me last week too. I didn't send one! It seems likely one of us has the virus, but it's hard to say who. My new Norton Antivirus (they wouldn't let me update the old program, had to download a new version!) says I am infection-free. Damn idiots who create these stupid viruses! I hope their karma catches up to them soon! ;-)

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

I received one of those too, EM. Nothing in it and it was from a name I recognised as being someone from one of the forums I read and post to but I don't remember now whose name it was. I thought it was strange but it didn't cross my mind, at that time, that it might be a virus.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

I've gotten 2 this week. Denise and Joy.....Kirk

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

Kirk, I love ya' but I'm sure I didn't send anything. I haven't received anything wierd either. I'll keep a look out though.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

Denise, I just sent you an email and it's not a virus! :)

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

The only person from here that I've e-mailed lately has been EM; and I almost never send attachments. I think I've sent a photo of Hubs and I to a few people, but not on this site; and I identified it in the subject line as "photo of Polly and Hubs". Soooo...if you get something with an attachment from my addy - it ain't me! I've been getting a few weird ones lately too (aside from the ones wanting to know if I want to increase the size of my penis) but not from anyone that tracks back here. Hubs is naive about things like this, so he isn't allowed to open e-mail unless I'm home!

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

After the email supposedly from Marcia I ended up having a worm sending a whack of email from me. MacAfee took care of it though, but since we didn't have an antivirus when we contracted the worm it required searching out this particular worm at Symantec (one bounced back email told us which worm it was)and installing a patch so that we could get the new antivirus software to work. After we got 'er loaded and updated the worm was then taken care of. Gotta tell ya I was freakin'. My friend Tom tells me that its emails like that that carry the worm usually. The creator of the thing will make an innocuous looking email and start the whole chain reaction. Most are aimed at Outlook Express too so you might want to switch to Eudora or Pegasus.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

I've been getting this type of stuff for weeks now. I'm TOLD that I shouldn't open them, so I don't. I'm also TOLD that I can't get the worms, or viruses, because I'm on a mac. But I'm still not going to open the dumb things.

I've been hearing lots of horror (well..) stories about people losing all their data from various weird viruses going around; all of them are on PCs. Some of these folks couldn't even get a single byte back, even when taken to "experts" who deal with this type of thing a lot.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2002

Sherri and EM both sent e-mails with no content but an attachment this week. I think I'll be bowing out of the BBS for a while.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2002

Our ISP filters incoming e-mails for virus's and quarantines them. I think I remember Jay saying something about pcillin---a free, constantly up-dated online virus scan. If yoiur out there Jay, whats the URL for pcillin?

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2002

I got one yesterday that looked like it was from Dee. I updated my virus definitions today and ran a full sweep. It came up clean so it's not me. Also, I don't use Microsoft Outlook and I don't have any of you in my address book.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2002

Has anyone else thought that maybe the virus scan companies are making these virus programs? Sell a lot more programs that way. I know it's not likely, it's just one of those things that run through my mind sometimes. I've been getting a lot of e-mails lately with no text. No graphics either. I run Netscape and just delete them. Haven't got any from anyone that I know though.

Wildman, (out of the box)

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2002