Is this a VIRUS?

in my emails!

[Andrew Thomas]

Im getting emails from my sister, that she has never sent me, It has a message like, 'this is a website you might enjoy it', but also send me a picture (gif) of want my sister has already sent me a few days ago?

This isnt just happening to me, but quite a few people I know, but the message and picture is always different.

thanks for any help

[chris_f]

If all the messages are of the same format but are not exactly the same then it is very likly it is a virus. If they are all the same (and even the dates match) then either their or your mail server/settings are damaged/incorrect.

Chris

[ukgimp]

Could it be this mutha

[mcafee.com...]

it has been doing the rounds lately.

[legster]

Definitely a virus. I get at least 25 of these a day. Often with the same text. Norton anti-Virus hits on everyone of them.

It probably did not come from your sister. Have her check her Sent Items box. If it is there then she might have a virus. More than likely it is not there, and it is pulling a random address from your contacts list, and placing it in the from field.

[Andrew Thomas]

OK thanks,

Im going to get Norton System Works anyway.

But do you think the virus is already on my machine, having opened the email from my sister?

[jdMorgan]

Andrew,

You might want to visit the Symantec web site, and see if they have a freebie, downloadable clean-up for this virus. Read the description for the klez virus as well, you may have that one.

One thing about these next-generation worms is that they fake the sender address to make them hard to track down. In the old days, the infected machine's owner's e-mail address would be in the message. Not anymore! And now they look around on the hard drive, finding documents from which to extract reasonable-sounding "subject" lines as well.

Symantec used to have a whole bunch of free virus detectors and fixers on-line. They probably still do. You have to dig for them, but they're free. [Disclaimer - I'm not affiliated]

Jim

[cornwall]

If you want belt and braces, try using MailWasher as well.

MailWasher enables you to easily see the messages on your ISP before you actually download them into your own machine. It gives headings and file size (and incidentally gives blacklisted sites too)

It is fairly obvious from the file size if you are being sent executables

Anything that you do not zap off the server then gets downloaded to your own machine. Norton (or similar) will then (should then) pick out any viruses that you have not zapped.