Blank messages,
Yes, I have been receiving them. Looked further into it and find two
different stories.
1) It was sent by the original sender who hit "Send" instead of "Quote"
on his E-Mail buttons. (8-(
2) It was NOT sent by the named sender, looked blank, but wasn't. This
one can contain the virus.
Unfortunately, you cannot tell which it is without opening it to see
what is inside. Here are a few simple things to do when faced with uncertainty:
1) If the "senders" name has a hyphen in front of it (
-jones@hotmail.com ), it is an address stolen by a virus from an Outlook
Express (PC) phone book and used to spam others in that list. A hyphen
is NOT an allowable address.
2) Use your mail option "Show full header" to see all that garbage about
how that message was handed off to you. What you want to look at is the
FIRST line that identifies the sender. If it is NOT the person it
purports to be, it may be bearing an evil fruit from a stolen address.
3) Unless you are ABSOLUTELY certain about the sender, NEVER open an
enclosure with ".exe". This is a program that can execute when opened
and do whatever it was designed to do. No your sender, it really is your
sender, and he is not forwarding you something he thinks is a valid
program, but has been tampered with to do more than intended.
4) Use the option "Show Source Code" in your mail. A truly blank sending
will have little on it but the sender, travel route, and subject. If
there is a lot of undecipherable text, it is bearing an additional "package".
If you are still concerned, buy a MAC. Nobody bothers to write viruses
for 5% of the population. If this is not in your agenda, get away from
Microsoft into Linux. Maybe even use the new Substitute for "Office"
with compatible files for Word and Excel (which can contain viruses). I
have had 7 recent "Urgent Security Updates" to my Windows computer, some
of which were to correct errors amongst the 7 updates!
If all else fails, buy a stamp. It may not get through very quickly, or
at all, and some of the viruses they have found are personally deadly.
There are three Laws of Thermodynamics, paraphrased here for the nontechnical:
1) You cannot win!
2) You cannot "break even"!
3) You cannot get out of the game!
Steve
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____________________________
Steve Laifman
Editor
<http://www.TigersUnited.com>
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