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To try and stop the KLez Virus/worm from going around to all of us for the next year, please take a few minutes and do this simple task.

Author: Kil Roy (---.dyn.optonline.net)
Date: 06-11-02 13:28

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 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 3 zeros).

In the window below where it prompts you to enter the new email address, type in "WormAlert." 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 #1. 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 e-mail telling you that an e-mail addressed to WormAlert cannot 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!

Be a responsible email user and do this.

...for passing along that great tip.

Quick and easy way to protect your friends/business contacts. Thanks for the tip. Just did it and feel safer already!!

Thanks,
Steve

Small problem with these action, with these procedures it's only getting added to the contact list not the address book because the email address is invaild according to my Outlook 2002. So well have to attach some type of bogus @xxxxx.xxx after Wormalert for it to be reconized I believe. Just experimenting out loud.

That did the trick added @xxx.xxx to email address and now it shows up in the address book.

Great tip.

I get 4-5 viruses per week. A very common one looks something like this (actual name not used): ___JimS as the sender.

The three underscores are the tip off. Someone has gotten the name of one of us off of the net and I have probably received this virus at least a dozen times over the the past couple of months.

It is insidious because we would all recognize the name. Sometimes it refers to a scenario or campaign even. Pretty crafty.
One had a subject: "Check out these Scenarios".

Some of them are obviously viruses because the subject is so stupid, they may as well say "Hey! There's a Virus Attached!" as the subject.

Alby strikes again! Thanks!

As some of you have undoubtedly already guessed, the name of the contact is only important as far as ascending order of your contacts go. I have no idea where '!' fits into email order, but apparently it comes before all the alphabetics in this case. The important thing is that when you lay out new conatcts later, that you make sure if they start with a non-alphabetic character, that you make sure they fall below your bogus contact.

Originally posted by gmenfan
Small problem with these action, with these procedures it's only getting added to the contact list not the address book because the email address is invaild according to my Outlook 2002. So well have to attach some type of bogus @xxxxx.xxx after Wormalert for it to be reconized I believe. Just experimenting out loud.

That did the trick added @xxx.xxx to email address and now it shows up in the address book.

I went one further and made it virus_alert@xxx.com

Now if I ever do get one of these worms/viruses it goes I can exact some revenge on the **** porn sites that inundate you with multiple windows when you go to a dead web site ...

http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_99213.htm

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/av ... entry.html

This is totaly ineffective against the Klez or Badtrans virus...

Please check the virus hoax sites before spreading its email equivalent...