Spoof Viruses

Not all viruses are what they seem to be. Some viruses infect a system, read the email address book and send out virus infected emails to members in the address book, as if they came from members in the address book.

Suppose joe@domain.com has the virus and his address book looks like:

and you are Barbara. You will get infected emails from adam@domain.com and support@microsoft.com. You might even get an infected mail from joe@domain.com.

What is worse, is that you may get a "nastygram" from Adam for sending him an infected email. You can also expect to get returned mail notices because the virus sent an email to an old address in joe's book, or you may get a notice that some ISP has detected that the email you sent one of its members was infected. It's all a matter of mistaken identity.

The thing to remember is that you are not necessarily infected nor are the people who seem to be sending you email. In fact you could be getting email from everyone except the infected system.

It's your misfortune if you are popular and on a lot of mailing lists or even if you are just on one list, and it has a long list of co-addresses.