There are apparently thousands of people who are infected. Whether we're
getting them because of the NG's I don't know.
It's a good policy to NEVER give your real email address to anybody you
don't know pretty well ... well enough to trust their personal promise that
they will NEVER use that address on a joke FWD or on any mailing list that
includes any other person who hasn't also made the same promise. In other
words, they will never send any email to anyone else which includes your
address in the TO fields in the mail header. If they're going to put you on
a mailing list, it should be in the BCC field, so it doesn't go into anyone
else's mail header.
Most of these worms work by harvesting email addresses from your email
service. If somebody forwards a joke to you and 10 other people, even if you
never forward it on, the other 9 could send it on to God only knows how many
people, and every single one of the multiplying FWD's being sent to people
you don't know will include your email address. I've seen joke FWD's that
included hundreds of addresses of people I don't know. If any of the people
on that list gets an email worm, you will probably be sent a virus, and/or
infected spams will be sent which seem to come from your name and address.
In this NG, by it's nature, I think it's reasonable to use your real
professional name, but it's only sensible to "disguiuse" your email address,
if you want it to be available to others here.
Elsewhere, it's a good rule to maintain several freebie accounts, at
email.com, yahoo, or whatever, and to only use those addresses whenever you
have to give an address to someone you don't know personally. In other
words, disposable email accounts. When they start getting spam, close the
account and start a new one.
Another good thing is a service called mailinator.com . It's the ultimate
one-time-use free email. If you have to give an email address, in order to
get one incoming email (i.e. an order confirmation or whatever), and you
don't want that person to know your real address, simply make up
any-name-whatsoever@mailinator.com. You don't have to have an account there.
Go to their web site, look under any-name-whatsoever, and any incoming mail
will be there. It's temporary, all mail is deleted after a few hours. It's
not the total solution to spam, but it addresses one aspect of it.
John wrote in message
news:m826nvknj0mhp0gnabsh1nd8nq75pn5ka5@4ax.com...
> >As far as I can tell, I am not infected. I think (hope) it's other
> >computers that are infected.
> >Matt
> >
>
> Well Im not infected either.... but I am receiving
> HUNDREDS of MS emails in my old Yahoo address that I
> WAS using for news posts..... but not any more!
>
> My Yahoo address is no useless cause of the SWEN worm.
> Im apparently getting these emails from someone elses
> computer who has the infection.
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