(Antivirus - yet again Plus Spam protection

Just recently, there has been a blast of extremely virulent and damaging viruses released on the unsuspecting (or should that be suspicious) computing community. A total of three such viruses have been released in very quick succession. I guess that in something like three days, I've received some 130-140 infected e-mails. Thankfully, I was able to detect these using a program we use which allows us to see what e-mails we have waiting to be collected before we download them. This program (called Mailwasher) also allows you to mark those you want to blacklist, delete and/or bounce and then to execute the process before opening your e-mail program. It also categorises e-mail as Normal, Possible Spam and Possible Virus, at least these are the categories I've come across so far. However, there are also two other categories you can apply yourself, Friendly and Blacklisted.

What should I do with unwanted e-mails? Under no circumstances should you reply to an e-mail that offers you the option of 'unsubscribing'. Unsubscribing in this instance is more likely to mean that the original senders now have proof that the particular e-mail address, yours, does in fact exist and that, a viable e-mail address, is a very marketable commodity to all those whose business seems to be in the selling of dubious medications, pornography or get rich quick(?) schemes. Spam, for that is what constitutes this unwanted e-mail, is sent out 'blind' by the 'Spammers'. They do not nor care whether a particular e-mail address exists but if you reply in the affirmative then yippee they have a 'hit'. All this randomly generated e-mail is just killing the internet or as a minimum slowly strangling it. The EU are doing all it can to reduce the amount of spamming but I am afraid that our second cousins across the big pond feel that to make spamming illegal would be against one or other of their constitution amendments.
Before I go any further, let me explain the term Bounce. When you bounce an e-mail, what you are doing is sending it back to the sender as though your e-mail address is invalid. This just MAY persuade the sender that your e-mail address no longer exists in the hope that they will stop sending you unsolicited e-mail. It's worth a try but nine times out of ten it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever! Something else will simply take its place.

The great thing about Mailwasher is that if it detects what it thinks is a virus it will indicate this but not always - I have found a few infected e-mails where I recognised the characteristics of a virus but which was not indicated as such. For this reason you still need to update your virus definitions. THIS IS ESSENTIAL - but let me tell you why - again!

When a virus is received, it is generally accompanied by an attachment which is infected by the virus. If you open/run the attachment, the virus is activated and installs itself in such a way that the next time you reboot your computer, the virus runs in the background, i.e. you don't even know its running. Although each virus has its own way of doing things, they all have the same overall effect and generally they look in your e-mail program's address book to see what addresses you have there. Still in the background, it then creates an e-mail to send to ALL the addresses in your address book, that is except one. That address is used as the sending address. What that means is that when the recipient gets the e-mail, it looks as though it has come not from you, but from the address it has chosen to enter in the sending address. Cunning eh? I don't know if it is common these days, but before entering your PC, some viruses even attempt to close your antivirus program so they are not detected. Hence the need for keeping your e-mail program up-to-date as well as your virus definitions!

As a result of the foregoing, its not difficult to work out how easily viruses can be spread and how quickly. We MUST try and nip such things in the bud and ensure that we are not responsible for spreading them. We can ONLY do so by ensuring our virus definitions are up to date and catching them as they come into our PCs via our e-mail programs.