There was a lot of publicity in UK a few weeks ago about a Virus of this
type. They predicted Internet meltdown etc . But nothing seemed to happen.
And I suspect that there is a large element of crying wolf with these
stories. Nowadays, nobody is really interested. They just accept that the
system will eventually get rid of these emails and will settle down again.
I'm just glad I've got a high speed link and I pay a monthly fee regardless
of volume. Just imaging if you had to pay to receive all these unwanted
messages.

Maybe we should find ways of preventing these viruses from being written in
the first place.

I don't see that it helps to add a "preservative" to the email address.
This merely causes any replies to be bounced. The sender then resnds to the
whole list and the individual email address without the preservative thereby
publishing the specific email address.

But is there a way that we could protect individual anonymity by modifying
informix-list to forward the email without the senders original address. I
also notice that any emails I reply to add the email address of the
originator to my address book. Can I stop that from happening so that I
manage my address book directly? If we all deleted each other from our
address books would that stop this propagation?

regards

Malcolm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Leffler" <jleffler@earthlink.net>
To: <informix-list@iiug.org>
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2003 8:20 AM
Subject: Re: Is it only me getting all these viruses ?


> Scott Burns wrote:
>
> > tbarth@barth-rz.de wrote:
> >
> >> I have many, many documents with viruses in my inbox. they are sorted
out
> >> but my mail admin is getting angry. Are there any problems ?
> >>
> >>
> > Yes. People run windows without bothering with personal firewalls which
> > prevent unauthorised programs from accessing the internet. Also, IE
> > will allow programs to connect thorugh it rendering these firewalls
> > ineffective. And, of course, people run the programs in the first
place...
> >
> > Are the viruses coming from this list? I don't see any on the news
> > groups, although I've seen them on others.
> >
> > If not, then there is nothing anyone here can do. If you have a mail
> > admin there is likely little you can do to stop them appearing in your
> > inbox. It's really up to your admin to filter them out, but there is
> > probably little even they can do.
> >
> > When I got 64 copies last friday I had a chuckle. I run Linux so I'm
> > not at risk. I've now received 1243 and I've heard of people in the
> > tens of thousands. The joke has worn thin. I'm of the opinion that
> > people who run windows deserve everything they get, but not even running
> > Linux is protecting me from this one...
> >
>
> Go to the web sites:
> http://securityresponse.symantec.com...swen.a@mm.html
> and also
> http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/swen.shtml
> and also
> http://www.bitdefender.com/html/viru..._id=1&v_id=158
>
> You'll see that the code does poke around NNTP (net news groups), so
> if you've posted to news groups, your more vulnerable to the email.
>
> My machine has 745 copies of the virus in the trash folder,
> accumulated in the last 12 hours or so. I've lost track of how many I
> deleted before that - but it was a significant quantity.
>
> What puzzles me is that there has been so little fuss made about it in
> the regular media.
>
>
> --
> Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h>
> Email: jleffler@earthlink.net, jleffler@us.ibm.com
> Guardian of DBD::Informix v2003.04 -- http://dbi.perl.org/
>

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