Virus Information

These worms, viruses, that are out there currently, go into someone's address book and use all the addresses they find. They send out messages to new people, using the addresses they find in the address book as the sender. This is why we're all receiving notifications that emails containing viruses have been received with our names as the supposed sender.

My ISP servicer even told me that one of the worms is using the isp servicer address as the sender to various subscribers to the ISP. They try to find someone to use whose name is a "known" name to the addressee, in hopes of getting the addressee to open the email.

So even though all of us have faithfully kept up with our virus detection software, it doesn't mean that someone or (in this case) some virus hasn't picked up our addresses from an unknown third party who WAS infected, and is using that information to fake email messages which seemingly come from us.

If anyone wants more information on these viruses and how they work, you are welcome to take a peak at my isp provider's home page which has a lot of useful info on viruses both on their home page and on a link contained therein. That address is www.hal-pc.org. Hal is a local (Houston) not for profit computer users group comprised of thousands of local computer hot shots. They are, as a whole, a very well informed group of computer users and I value their advice and counsel.

I use their e-mail virus program to screen incoming messages and I also have up-to-date Norton's to screen any outgoing messages as well as my computer virus search on a weekly basis. I've still received several messages in the past couple of weeks stating that a message I was sending contained a virus and I should double check my computer. The messages that were referred back to me were not messages I had sent out to anyone.

And, if anyone has "Black Ice" on their computer, please be warned that there is a problem with it that makes it vulnerable to a virus that is undetectable. Hal-pc is warning users to delete the program from their computer. For more details, see the above-mentioned Hal-pc home page.

I hope this information is useful to you and will help to explain how some of these viruses are being spread.

Julie