[Boatanchors] viruses

[Keith Heitzmann]

At 05:10 PM 7/26/2004 -0700, Glen Zook wrote:
>Someone is "spoofing" my E-Mail address and sending
>out viruses.  I just ran my anti-virus program and my
>machine is "clean".
>
>The E-Mail address on the "spoofed" is "Gzook"
><gzook at YAHOO>COM>.  When I am using this Yahoo
>account, which I do on all of the reflectors, the
>correct way that it comes down is "Glen Zook"
><gzook at yahoo.com>.  Note that my name is spelled out
>and that yahoo.com is in all lower case letters and
>NOT upper case as in the "spoofed" E-Mail address.


Hi Glen,

I'd just like to say that while its possible this is coming from someone close to you or on this list, its very unlikely.  It could be coming from a pc anywhere in the world.    The way most of these worms work is they are written to look around the Internet for email address that may be there for the taking, then they just start spawning new address in hopes of coming close to a real address.  How do they take email addresses?  Glad you asked!   You gave it to them............   just do a google search with your address in it and you will see what I mean.  It came back with 189 hits with your address embedded in these types of list messages.  You will also note that most of the domain names are in upper case.   

The programing that is used is commonly called a robot or "BOT" for short.  It combs the Internet web sites for email addresses in the HTML code and then uses them to start sending spam, virus or whatever.    This is the reason that people will get emails bounced back to them from sources that they have never heard of before.  Its a way of covering the real culprits tracks.

This is just one of the many ways your email could be spoofed.  Another is the program will take a known domain and start creating names out of characters at random hoping to hit on a real address which is the reason no one should ever respond to these types of messages telling them to unsubscribe you, or whatever.....  it just tells them the email is address is real.     I installed a spam/virus server for the company I work for.   It catches on average two to three thousand spam and or virus messages a week.  Most are spawned email addresses that don't make sense.  

This is happening to everyone and at an alarming rate.

Anyway, I hope no one minded me going off on this!   

Take care and 73,
Keith,  KK5FE



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