# I think I have an email virus...Suggestions?



## clovis (May 13, 2002)

A few weeks ago, a couple of people that I have in my email contact list asked me if I had sent them an email. I was confused, because I hadn't.

Then, last week, I got about 30 "failure to be delivered" emails returned to me from nearly everyone on my email contact list. Most of the failed emails were to old emails that were no longer active, even though I had them in my contact list.

Of course, my phone rang off the hook that day, from all my friends and family that said I had sent emails to them. Many people said that their virus protection had picked up the email.

The problem is that I hadn't sent emails to a soul that day.

Yesterday, the email virus happened to send emails to everyone again.

IIRC, I do think that I opened an email from someone...and got the virus. (Word to the wise...don't open emails with nothing in the subject heading.)

I have Yahoo! mail, and am using a silver Sony laptop that is about 4 years old. 

*One big problem* I have, aside from having a virus, is that I know _nothing_ about computers.

Fixes? Ideas? Thoughts? 

*Thank you for your help!!!!*


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Not a windows person, but you will need to run one of the virus programs to find and eliminate the virus. With windows you should already be running a virus protection program. I think windows even provides a built in one if you have it turned on and updated. Wait for windows expert to post and give nitty gritty recommendations. I have no idea what best free current virus software for windows is.

As to recommendations for future....

Big hint, dont use the built in windows email client. Get a 3rd party email client like Mozilla Thunderbird. Dont open any exe files attached to your email. Dont let emails automagically open, there should be a setting in any email client to prevent this. Set it to show text only, only attachments you want to open .jpg, .png, etc picture files and do it manually. Unless of course you are expecting a particular document from an email correspondent, then open it manually. I believe you can run the virus protection software to inspect a file before opening it.

Or you can try to play the virus protection game with bigger and bigger protection programs and continual updates to try and patch holes. IE and whatever they are calling the windows email client now are prime targets for people that write virus. Plug one hole and they find 50 more.

I use linux and when I get virus emails, I can click on them with impunity. EXE files wont run on a linux system and I open emails in text only, just good habit to get in. See the evil people that write and disperse this junk are looking to affect the most computers that they can. Most people use windows XP or newer. Most windows people use the built in browser and email client (if they use an email client). So they target these people. Linux on workstations has less than 5% regular users and they might be using any linux email client. No universal built in browser or client. Whatever particular distribution usually included one of maybe 3 or 4 popular ones. So who would you attack for maximum effect?


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

download and run Malwarebytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/ -- there is a sticky at the very top of this section about virus and Malware/Spyware removal.


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## clovis (May 13, 2002)

Wow!!!!! 

Thank you so much for the help!!!!!


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## Jeffery (Oct 25, 2011)

The way most of those email viruses work, they forward an infected link to every email address in your email address book. Then people who receive the infected email click on the link, thinking it is from you, and the virus again forwards to everyone in their email address books. Online email accounts are especially vulnerable. Untill your antivirus catches it, one way to stop it from spreading is to delete all the addresses in your online email account. Also, never click on an unknown link, even if it appears to be from a friend. And always log-out of your email account when you are finished using it. 
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