Does This E-mail Theory Work?

I received an e-mail from someone I know asking me this, "What do you think about this [e-mail], Ryan?".

The e-mail stated this...

"How to protect your e-mail address book.

A computer repairman says this is like having gold. This is a good thing. I learned 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 the 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 'A'.

For the screen name or email address, type AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA

Now, here's what you've done and why it works:

The 'name 'A' 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.

When it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA, it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered. If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and none of your friends will 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 In Box almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA could not 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! Pretty slick huh? If everybody you know does this then you need not ever worry about opening mail from friends."


So, is this true or false.......?

False. Most worms have their own e-mail client to do the work for them and they do not use your e-mail address to send the worm to someone else. So you will not get an e-mail saying your e-mail address was unable to send an e-mail to "AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA" The only part that I saw true was the part in green.


So compute smart and remember the 3 things to keep your computer from being infected:
1) Anti Virus-- Keep an up-to-date anti virus program installed on your computer... Even if you own a Mac. (Don't forget to run system scans at least once a week)
2) Keep your version of Windows or Mac OS X up-to-date with the updates released once a month.
3) Never open an e-mail or download the attachments from someone you do not know.

If you do these three things, your computer will continue to be safe. If you would like to make sure your computer is clean, or if your computer ever becomes infected, feel free to contact me to help you out.