Hotmail virus

[Helen F H]

<font color='#000080'>I have just checked my email and found three &quot;bounced back&quot; emails that i had apparently sent. &nbsp;Two of the addresses i didnt know, one was someone i deleted from my contacts a while ago.
I have Norton at home, and Hotmail knew there was a virus in these mails as it had them in my junk mail and said there was a virus attached to them.
What do i do?

[DIVE BUDDHA]

if uve found an incoming virus on an e-mail just delete at whilst still on the hotmail severs go off-line and do a full system scan just incase its got stored in your sytem cache i hate viruses that propogate this way real pain

[Fathoms Down]

The good news is that the mails were almost certainly not sent by you but a virus pretending to be you and so your PC is not infected.

There are a couple of types of virus going around at the moment which do this so its quiet common to get rejected messages for emails which you didn't send. Don't worry too much about it. It seems to be happening to everyone at the moment &nbsp;

[abucksdiver]

<font color='#000080'>Porg,
Hotmail *should* have deleted the actual virus files from within your messages.

It will have then put the messages that *used* to contain the viruses in the Junk folder.

All hotmail messages are scanned at the server by McAfee.

I have put words within **, as there can be a time lag between a new virus (or virus variant) hitting the &quot;wild&quot;, and it becoming detectable by any AV software. This is one of the advantages of buying one of the market leader brands (McAfee, Norton etc.) over the freebie AV programs; the latest virus definitions get updated much quicker (McAfee have been issuing between 3 and 6 sets of updated virus definitions PER WEEK for about the last two months, just to cope with the current coding battle that is going on between virus writers!)

As already mentioned, 1. The bounce-backs were probably caused by a virus on another computer that &quot;spoofed&quot; your address, and 2. If in doubt, run a system scan on your PC....

Hope this helps,


Andrew (abucks) - working for one of the above mentioned companies...

[abucksdiver]

<font color='#000080'>PS&gt; ...and if Hotmail (McAfee) says there is a virus in the messages in your Junk Folder... delete them! Even if the virus has been removed, there is no &quot;genuine&quot; message within them, must likely just some text saying &quot;Read the important information in the attached file&quot;

Also, don't believe any text at the bottom of any e-mail message that says anything like:

++++ Checked as virus free++++
++++By {AV Company of your choice}++++

as it almost definately isn't!


Regards
Andrew (abucks)