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If you are getting email bounced back to you stating things like: "mail delivery failed" "returned mail: user unknown" "returned due to virus..." "It seems that you have sent an attachment. This account does not accept attachments." or you get complaints from others that your email is infected with a virus, and yet you are sure that you did not send that email (the addresses are ones that you did not send to or have ever used), then what you are seeing is the result of a virus (but not necessarily a virus on your computer). First, if you do get email bounced back to you about your email being infected with a virus, and you DID send email to that site/person, then perhaps your system is indeed infected with a virus. Its best to check your system using a virus scanner. You can get a copy of Trend Micro anti-virus software for free (Camden Computing Services/Rutgers paid for the site license for all students, staff and faculty to use at Rutgers or at home) at http://mssg.rutgers.edu Otherwise, if you didnt sent any of those email and you received the above messages, what you are seeing is the results of a virus. These viruses may be infecting the pc's of your friends or people you know, and these people happen to have your email address in their address book. What this virus does on their machines, is that it tries to spread itself by sending itself to many other users using their address book and also forges a "From:" address using a random address from the infected system's address book (which may be your email address!). So others get email sent to them with your name on it (but you didnt send it, your "friends" infected system sent the mail out). So thats why other systems then reject the mail and bounce it back to you with the above messages. That is what you are seeing. How to get rid of this? Short Term: a. spam filtering - you should turn on spam filtering on your rutgers email account. This may help to cut back on some of these messages. You can get more information on this at http://www.camden.rutgers.edu/HELP/Documentation/Unix/Spam-filtering.php b. Contact everyone who has your email address in their computers address book and tell them to check their systems for viruses (and maybe even have them take your address out of their address book). Of course, this is often not pratical. Sometimes by checking the full headers of the original email, one can figure out where the email really originated from, but sometimes not. And getting others to send you the full headers of email is not an easy task. c. This is so prevalent and happens so often, many people just ignore these type of messages. Long Term: All people on the Internet must learn to keep their systems up to date, install security patches as needed, and use up to date anti-virus software. Also many sites, including Camden Computing Services, no longer bounces back messages from viruses, because of the high likelihood that the From: address was forged. If you have any questions, please contact help@camden.rutgers.edu Further information on spam and email viruses can be found at: http://www.camden.rutgers.edu/HELP/email.php
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Questions/comments regarding Camden Computing Services or this web site can be directed to: help@camden.rutgers.edu. Last updated: June 06, 2006, 11:21 EDT. © 2005-2008 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved. |