Another Computer Virus Question

Im running Windows Vista on this Computer and Windows Mail (POP 3 versus a web based e mail). I have that Virus/Trojan that sends EVERYONE in my e mail contact list a fake e mail THAT I SURE DIDNT SEND. I run my Avantek System Suite Professional Version 11 (Malware and Spyware and Virus scan etc) and that seems to stop it for a while. I once read something about placing an e mail address aaaaaaaa.aaaaaaaaa or something like that in your contact list to stop that??

Anyone familiar with a method to stop everyone in my contact list from getting a fake e mail I didnt send or receive myself to my knowledge??? My Avantek System Suite Pro 11 anti virus and anti spam and spy and adware seems to prevent and stop everything else BUT NOT THIS GRRRRRRR

John T

Probably always something gonna get by but a big step in prevention is don't open "FWD" emails and don't forward emails to people. Only takes a second to get rid of the garbage and send it out. Once you get in the habit and resist the urge to open fwd mails (majority of which are BS anyway) you'll see a slowdown. If someone get's an email from you with a funny looking link and are dumb enough to click on it, they should only do it once or twice before seeing the light.

Dave

Hi John T -

Are you positive the fake emails are really coming from your machine?? (if you could look at the message headers on one of the emails that your friends receive, it would show the origination IP address and that would tell for sure).

Most spam/fake email like you are talking about is "spoofed"... In other words, it is generated somewhere else, but the spammer just ascribes your name and reply-to address to the message.

They do that just to enhance the chances the recipients will open it...

It gets sort of complicated on how they accomplish that - but if it were an easy problem to solve, there would have been a fix by now...

My email is open - if want to dig into some of the details...

Howard

(quoted from post at 08:19:03 04/08/11) Im running Windows Vista on this Computer and Windows Mail (POP 3 versus a web based e mail). I have that Virus/Trojan that sends EVERYONE in my e mail contact list a fake e mail THAT I SURE DIDNT SEND. I run my Avantek System Suite Professional Version 11 (Malware and Spyware and Virus scan etc) and that seems to stop it for a while. I once read something about placing an e mail address aaaaaaaa.aaaaaaaaa or something like that in your contact list to stop that??

Anyone familiar with a method to stop everyone in my contact list from getting a fake e mail I didnt send or receive myself to my knowledge??? My Avantek System Suite Pro 11 anti virus and anti spam and spy and adware seems to prevent and stop everything else BUT NOT THIS GRRRRRRR

John T

Click to expand...

Don't know why that would stop it from getting to the legit email addresses. You'd get an NDR (non-deliverable) from the DNS lookup on the bogus domain name, but the legit ones would get through. Another thing to consider is that once a hacker gets a legit email address (yours) and a legit list of contacts (yours) it probably is making its way around the world. Eventually you'll end up on a blacklist. You might want to check that via online blacklist lookup tools.

John; Did you get the E-Mail I sent the other day?

Yep I got it thanks, just not had time yet to take a look

John T

Im running a deep total scan now with my anti virus malware spyware and so far its found one severe rated Trojan and has quarantined it so I will see what happens next

John T

Dave2,

For crying out loud, now you are taking all of the fun out of the computer. )

Yep, the old virus/trojan excuse. Sounds like the wife found your emails to all your other girlfriends.

Actually about all email servers are web based. Certain email programs like outlook and netscape allow you to manage them within the program on your computer but you can still go find them on the internet from another computer or from your phone. Try putting www. in front of your pop mail address and you get to the server. Then log in with user name and password.

AT&T uses att.yahoo.com as its server. I then use netscape on some computers and outlook on another to access them and store them on the computer. However AT&T and most others have their own spam filters and store spam for about 30 days. When someone tells me they sent an email I didn't get, I go to the web mail site and usually find it in the spam folder. Usually check it every 2 or 3 weeks. It catches most of the drug and foreign spam. Outlook and Netscape has additional spam filters but those programs won't see something until it passes through AT&T first.

Just got an HTC Evo phone with Android a week ago. Slickest thing ever for monitoring email. Tracks all your email accounts and automatically and instantly downloads them. The voice to text application that allows me to speak a message or reply is better than sliced bread. I may never have to type a message again. The big screen and finger flick to expand the size makes the internet not bad to read. Guess I need to try the voice to text on a reply on this forum next chance I get.

All I can say is it makes me want to kick the so and so's that create this garbage right in the (poor word choice)...

Good. At least that works.

hello john t I am trying the voice to text on this phone right now. it appears to work good.

You've probably got some form of a root kit virus that is VERY hard to detect... and what some of them do is overtake your OS and start downloading other viruses and doing other strange things. It may be that the root kit has downloaded a virus that gets into your e-mail software. You detect and remove that virus... but the root kit is still there and will eventually go back to doing what it did.
I had a root kit on this machine for roughly a month... and the only way to clean it was to wipe the drive and reinstall the OS. Nasty, nasty bugger to clean off.

Rod

Somebody may have hacked your computer, make sure to change your pass word.

You are correct on the root virus being hard to kill. I need to take my "old" computer back to my computer guru. It worked fine for about a month after he thought he had it completely cleaned, and them one afternoon every place I tried to go, like even here, would go right to porn sites I don't want to see.

The only thing that it would allow me to do is a "system scan" that informed me I have like 30 virus programs, and pay them to remove them. NOPE!!

It is going back to him, going to tell him to keep it a month or so and see if anything reloads itself.

Bad thing is I think I lost what little stuff I had on there, meaning the pictures and some word processing documents. The pictures can be recovered, I still have all the SD cards. I swap for a new one about twice a year in the camera so won't lose much, and burn to CD about once a year. DOUG

As long as you continue to use Microsoft products, you're going to have virus problems. Better to jump ship.
A hundred other choices

burn this to cd and run it see how you like it. If you like it install it you will never have a Virus ever!
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

To properly scan for viruses you need to be in safe mode and have system restore turned off.
Another way to kill viruses is just do a system restore to some point before you got it.

If the virus has not disabled the system restore points previous to the date of infection... The root kit I had... very quickly destroyed the older system restore points. The outward sign of infection on mine was the Google Hijacker which redirected links in a google search...

Rod