I have just returned home and checked my e-mail. I have 6 infected messages from SunRentals. Subject: AB Car Rentals, screensavers, and so on.. has anybody else received infected mail from SunRentals? Fortunately, I have Norton AntiVirus, so my computer is protected. I have mailed SunRentals about this.

I got over forty of them from them this morning and also have let them know...

Jake

I've got more since my earlier post. But, I have also received an apology from SunRentals.

thanks for the warning sarah, i will check my home email tonight and delete anything i get from them.

They were cured of their virus as of around 12:30pm AST today. I got a nice note back too.

Jake

I had a severe problem up my return from being in BON for 7 weeks. I thought I had Klez as folks told me I was sending infected virus emails (I too have Norton) but I did a KlezFix and I did NOT have it..my Norton antivirus shows I am clean..but get this..some folks were getting copies of PRIVATE emails. These folks were not on my send list and still got them..YIKESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS...I still do not know what was up.

On an aside I learned that Klez can take your address and send virus emails with YOUR address but they are not from you..does this make sense??

Who are the wackos who make up these annoying viruses?

Annie

When I got home from work I had three from Sunrentals, one of which froze my computer when I tried to open it. Deleted others before opening as well as that one and so far not other problems. Glad to hear that Sunrentals was so responsive -- am not surprised though as we have been enjoying working with them in planning our Feb trip.

Ok, this is sooo weird..Norton Antivirus screened out a virus infected email..guess who from?? MEEEEEEEEEE!!

What is up with my computer?? Would someone tell me??



Annie

Susan,

Scan your system ASAP. Annie - buy a new one :-)

Jake

Ann, what you heard is true. Klez, and other recent virii, can send themselves out with a different Sender address. It infects a computer, scans it, maybe infects a few files, and it goes hunting for e-mail adresses. It looks at the Windows addressbook, scans files, the cache of your Internet Explore etc. Most of these virii have their own mailserver built in (SMTP) so they don't need any help sending themselves out... with a faked header. So it may appear the mail is coming from you, when actually it may come from someone who had your address on their computer.

I run a couple of mailinglists... You'd be amazed how much of this sh*t I get daily, from addresses I know for sure couldn't have sent them.

For the technically able: One thing a virus can't fake is the Originating IP. If you want to verify that the mail is coming from the person in the Sender field, take this IP address and do a trace. At the least it will give you the name of the provider.

Sam Spade is a good PC tool (http://samspade.org/ssw/dl.html)

I strongly recommend AVG Anti-Virus, partly because it WORKS, partly because it is FREE to download and use for an immediate result. I actually was able to download, install and run it on an already infected machine and still ultimately save the system from a viral disaster.

Klez is particularly brutal. I got it (before starting use of the above...) while NORTON was actually running in full force on my system. Once I realized that I was infected (uh, all my programs started crashing really, really badly), I took a desperate chance of trying to find something that would kill the virus without killing the patient. Once I had narrowed down the culprit, I went looking for a targeted cure. In addition to FIXKLEZ I also found two other freeware or free shareware general anti-virals that said they could find and beat even KLEZ infections- AVG was one of them. The other failed to work, so is not mentioned here.

Even so, it took cold-booting off of a floppy, running FIXKLEZ, scanning, cleaning, rebooting, re-running FIXKLEZ, and rescanning twice more to finally defeat it and all its babies on four different infected logical drive partitions; at one point it was spawning garbage copies of itself on one drive letter even as the virus software was deleting hundreds of other infection-carrying garbage files that it had created on another.

But in the end I won, and without having to reformat the hard drive! I did have to reinstall about a half dozen programs. Any application software made by Microsoft seemed especially vulnerable to permanent corruption by Klez.

Unlike 85% of everyone else, I NEVER use Microsoft email software, so I did not become a carrier. An old version of a nice simple email client that I have been using since the day when the best ones were still freebies does fine for me, thanks. Most of the sadists that write virus programs go for maximum effect, so they generally ignore any programs that have only tiny shares of the overall Microsoft-dominated market.

-LS

I just got in....I can't even access my email....it will not come up on the screen at all...how can I use the anti virus if I can't even have it show up on my monitor...whats going on????

Leif - Amen - I'm a die hard Eudora user (with a non-standard configuration so that virii can't guess at my e-mail/attachment directory locations). Can't stand the Outlook Express Virus Magnet :-)

Jake

A PocoMail user here :-) You're right, NOT running Micro$oft Outlook (Express) is one of the easiest precautions you can take against infections. And, of course, knowing which attachments you can open and which not. I get a lot of mail, including a lot that contain viruses, but so far I've never been infected.

I also received the infected e-mail from Sunrentals and I have Norton anti-virus protection but just found out after a year of thinking I was protected that it doesn't work with AOL e-mail! Now I need to find something that will scan my AOL e-mail before I open it. Does anyone know of one?