Virus mail and such

[David Wilson]

Creighton Dement recently received a virus mail that appeared to be from me.

I know that my address is on somebody's infected computer, since I regularly 
receive virus mail bounces from random servers.  I have taken all reasonable 
steps within my knowledge and power to ensure that that infected computer is 
not mine.  I run ZoneAlarm firewall and AVG antivirus, and do occasional 
manual checks of my registry for unwanted DLLs, BHOs and startup programs. 
I rarely send attachments, if I do, they will be innocuous formats such as 
.jpg or .pdf files.  If you get a message from me with an attached 
executable, such as a .exe, .pif, or .scr file, assume it's not from me.

Almost all viruses read address books, but I'ven never of one that adds 
addresses to it.  Therefore, I assume that Creighton's and my own address 
had been added to the address book of the offending machine in the normal 
fashion.  This argues fairly strongly for a seqfan or math-fun subscriber 
with an infected computer.  Maybe math-fun and seqfan should require a 
certain level of virus protection from their subscribers.  Just a thought.

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- David Wilson