OT: seeking knowledge about pc viruses

Whistle
1

I’ve spent some time on Symantec’s site, and reading articles on about.com, but I still don’t understand a few basic things.
I have a current version of Norton’s that I run routinely and it never reports viruses on my system. I also subscribe to Postini, which quarantines infected emails and spam for me. But, some strange things have been slipping past Postini. I got a failed delivery notice about a stack of emails I never sent to addresses that all happen to be on the server I use. I got a foreign language email telling me a virus infected email came from my address. (I didn’t know I could read Swedish.)
Postini quarantined an infected email supposedly from Bill Whedon, but I assume that is just because Bill’s email address was with mine in somebody else’s virus infected pc.
Anyway, my question is, how do I know whether or not I am spreading email viruses–Norton’s always comes up clean and I (knock on wood)don’t have any problems with my pc.
Please direct me to reference sites that do a better job of explaining things to me than about.com. Or offer me your own explanations.
Am I just experiencing normal snafus because of message board members who have my address in their book and have infected pc’s?
Lisa

Oh, by the way, I use Netscape messenger, never Outlook.

[ This Message was edited by: ysgwd on 2002-12-14 15:48 ]

2

…I got a failed delivery notice about a stack of emails I never sent to addresses that all happen to be on the server I use. I got a foreign language email telling me a virus infected email came from my address. (I didn’t know I could read Swedish.) …

What may have happened here is that some spammer “hijacked” your e-mail address to use as a return address (and perhaps relayed messages through your server).

It happened to me once–I got DOZENS of “address not found” autoresponse messages. Fortunately, my ISP realized, even before my alarmed message to them, that I wasn’t the spammer.

Have you routinely gotten the virus signature updates from Norton? That’s as important as having virus protection in the first place.

M

3

Yes, Marguerite, I live update Norton’s more than once a week.
Thanks for the explanation about email address hijacking.
Lisa

4

the Klez virus fakes headers also…
which means that someone who is infected might send out virus emails with your email address in the “from” list. If you come up clean with your updated virus scanners, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.