My computer caught a virus

[godfire]

   Sorry to everyone that received emails yesterday from me about a strategic shopping thing.
The email subject line is hello. I believe they are harmless, but if you haven't opened them, just delete them. I'm still not sure how I got infected.
It should be taken care of, but let me know if you receive anymore.

[JimC]

I had the same thing happen to me a few years ago,  my computer tech stated that if you add the following to your email address book, it confuses the automatic mailers because it is the first entry in your mail box, when they can't get past it they give up.

AAA.aaa@aaa.aaa

It can't hurt anything to do it, and I have not had a problem since.

Jim

[RainMaker]

You gotta' be more careful when you go to those porn sites.  I've heard you can catch all kinds of bad things.

[Houdini]

I had the same thing happen to me a few years ago,  my computer tech stated that if you add the following to your email address book, it confuses the automatic mailers because it is the first entry in your mail box, when they can't get past it they give up.

AAA.aaa@aaa.aaa

I deal with infected PC's and servers almost daily and this advice makes no sense.  An auto-mailer will scoop up all of the addresses on your PC and blast email to all of them; it doesn't send them out one at a time and wait for a bounce or response.  The programs do not care if they are legitimate addresses or not, they just send.  If you want to add this address to give you some warm and fuzzy feel free, but don't expect it to actually do anything.

I'm still not sure how I got infected.
It should be taken care of, but let me know if you receive anymore.

Jim, hit the Internet and find and install malwarebytes; it should get you cleaned up without calling a tech for service.  Spybot Search and Destroy is a good clean-up app also but be careful; it is a powerful app that can destroy your PC if used improperly.  If you cannot get anything to run properly on your PC because the worm/trojan/virus is blocking your every move; download rkill.com onto a different PC, save it to a thumb drive, and copy it onto your infected PC.  You can use rkill to stop all non-MS services and apps so you can access the other applications and/or Internet on your infected box.  I highly recommend you download rkill and malwarebytes even if your PC is all cleaned up and safe; having them on your box before it gets infected makes it much easier to cleanup later.

Autoruns and XP-antispy are good for cleaning up the registry but again, if you don't know what your doing, you can kill the PC with these apps.

Call me if you need any assistance.

[HayHauler]

 rkill and malwarebytes, excellent advise.  I have used both of them and they work as described.  Spy Bot has helped me at times too.  Good solid info Houdini!

Hay
Jimmyt

[Rocketman]

I was wondering about that.  I received two of them, a few hours apart.  Hadn't opened them, since they looked suspicious.  I take it as a two-fold lesson:
1) You can't trust every email, even from people you know.  They might not be the ones in control.  I expect that the email from you contains the malicious code, and it's self-propagating.
2) I need to start putting more descriptive subject lines into my own emails, so that my recipients know what they can trust and what they can't.

[RainMaker]

I was wondering about that.  I received two of them, a few hours apart.  Hadn't opened them, since they looked suspicious.  I take it as a two-fold lesson:
1) You can't trust every email, even from people you know.  They might not be the ones in control.  I expect that the email from you contains the malicious code, and it's self-propagating.
2) I need to start putting more descriptive subject lines into my own emails, so that my recipients know what they can trust and what they can't.

I make it a point not to open any email from Godfire......

[Houdini]

I'm jealous!  GF didn't send me a virus...

[Ghillie]

Don't worry Chuck, I'll be happy to forward it.