Here's an e-mail I received to protect your address book fiends from the worm virus:

Here is a simple trick to protect your friends and even your self
to some extent that's really ingenious in its simplicity.

As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it often heads
straight for your email address book and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friends and associates.

This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do: first, open your address book and click on
"new contact" just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email addresses. In the window where you would type yourfriend's first name, type in !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros). In the window below where it prompts you to enter the new email address, type in WormAlert. (If it tells you this is not a valid address just say yes to add it, or ok). Then complete everything by clicking add, enter, ok, etc.

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: the 'name" !000 will be placed at the top of your address book as entry #1. This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends. But when it tries to send itself to !000, it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered (WormAlert). If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and your friends will not be infected. Here's the second great advantage of this method: if an email cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your Inbox almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to WormAlert could not be delivered, you know right away that you
have the worm virus in your system. You can then take steps to get rid of it.
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06-19-02, 02:04 PM
nerdqueendeluxe
I can't get this to work in Hotmail. It won't support the ! character as a quick name and also insists on an email address.
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06-20-02, 02:06 AM
KesMan
Put 0000 Worm Alert
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06-20-02, 03:04 PM
angela-cc
I recently found out from Dwight that this doesn't necessarily always work. The reason given was that some worm viruses will attatch themselves to jpegs, and are programed to ignore certain numbers or letters/characters. They can also be programed to target certain numbers, letters/characters. Dwight knows a lot more about it that I do. Dwight??? yoohoo! big grin
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06-23-02, 11:28 AM
Fritzzs
I've been using that for about a year now, and lo and behold, when I logged on this morn, here was a message that a worm virus tried to enter my e-mail.....eh he he he- stopped the little booger in its tracks.... big grin wink razz razz razz razz razz
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06-26-02, 10:26 PM
mahal
I would think that most e-mail servers won't accept an address as valid if it doesn't have the "@" symbol or the ".com" or ".net" or something like that.

If this is the case, try something you know is phony, like "hoomail" instead of "hotmail" or make up something you know you can remember.
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06-30-02, 01:20 AM
nerdqueendeluxe
In the Quick name part of the Hotmail address book...I can't get it to take zeros but it will take 1000. Please, how did you do it? Will AAAA work better?
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07-02-02, 08:32 PM
mahal
nerdqueendeluxe:

(love that name!)

Use any ascii code you want, the idea is for the phony name to be at the top of the list. If you want to know what comes before A alphabetically (in ascii, that is), you could open a spreadsheet and just put a lot of letters and symbols in a collumn and have the data sorted to see what order they end up in. Whatever comes before A you can use.
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07-02-02, 09:08 PM
nerdqueendeluxe
Thanks for that...more for me to learn! I have never worked in an office and haven't got a clue as to how to find a spread sheet or what to do with one. Finding out is tomorrow's lesson! This is so much fun!! Glad ya like the name, it suits.
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07-13-02, 11:21 AM
Gamin
I got this same email today, except it said to put AAAAAAAAAA for the name, same difference - good idea. That is until those worm makers decide to make the virus go from z to a.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,