Trick your email program's address book!

Who among us doesn't know someone who has experienced the embarrassment of unknowingly spreading a computer worm via their email address book?

You can STOP this from happening to you by TAKING CONTROL of your email program. For those of you who are unaware, many computer worms spread themselves by sending themselves to everyone in your email program's address book. Imagine how you would feel if you unknowingly infected others with a computer worm. Or if your friends, family, and business contacts were being targeted by your computer.

Here is a great way to avoid something like that from happening. It won't prevent You from getting any computer worms or viruses (you need to keep your anti-virus software kept up-to-date and have it automatically scan email attachments to help prevent YOUR system from being infected), but this will stop computer worms from latching onto your address book and sending copies of themselves out to others.

To avoid spreading computer worms, create a contact in your email address book like this.  For the name, enter !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. (If it tells you this is not a valid address just say yes to add it, or ok). 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 email telling you that an email addressed to WormAlert could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm in your system. You can then take steps to get rid of it!

A Great Idea! - Forward this page to ALL your email contacts. The more people that use this technique, the less vulnerable we ALL will be to the computer worms that spread in this manner!

Disclaimer: This information was sent to us by one of our readers, and has not been thoroughly tested by us. There is no guarantee as to the effectiveness of this procedure with your particular email program. We are not responsible for any problems or loss of data that may arise from you using this procedure on your computer.

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