Posted by MonicaFL on 10/21/09 9:03am
Msg #308075

To My notary family here on NR

If any of you get an e-mail from ilvgolf2004@yahoo. com, please, please, please just delete it. I had a worm and somehow it had taken over my email address book and several people were getting e-mails supposedly from me. Sylvia called me last night and helped me get rid of the worm so now i hope all is well. I apologize to any and all of you who may have received such an e-mail.

Reply by BestFlCloser on 10/21/09 9:23am
Msg #308078

Here's how to let you know that there is a worm in your email system.

Add a contact name: !0000
email: wormalert@

The address book will sort on the first letter of the name, which is '!'. So that entry will always be on top.

What happens is that many email programs 'see' the '!' as a marker that say to the operating system, 'Ignore everything that follows'. The email addy of 'wormalert@' is one that will bounce back to you, and you'll know something is going on.

Hope this helps.

Reply by PAW on 10/21/09 9:36am
Msg #308080

This 'trick' does not work

The suggestion is to set up a dummy !0000 (or others, such as AAAAA) e-mail contact address in your Outlook or Windows address book, but without an actual (real) e-mail address. This would, it is claimed, then cause the e-mail to fail when accessed by an e-mail aware piece of malware.

This trick might work in a few instances, however, it won't stop the vast majority of the e-mail aware malware.

Read the entire article at http://cluestick.info/hoax/Outlook_Trick.htm

Please don't rely on this "trick", in most cases it won't work, don't forward this Hoax on to other people- delete it. Instead of using this trick, try Installing the latest Microsoft patches for Outlook as you will get better protection, and/or use a good up-to-date anti-virus product.

Reply by Notarysigner on 10/21/09 10:02am
Msg #308084

Re: This 'trick' does not work

You are correct!

Reply by JanetK_CA on 10/22/09 3:32am
Msg #308190

It must be going around!

I did a signing last night where the husband had a neighbor there at the same time as the signing working on removing a worm from his computer. The guy was in the next room and the husband kept popping up from the table to check on him. It took an hour for an appointment that should have taken 30-40 minutes, but they had the baseball game going in the living room on a nice big screen... so I wasn't complaining. Super nice people, too.