Just delete them, they really can't be tracked back by you
and they have zero value content.
There is nothing you can learn besides what you know, they
are not from MS, they do have a virus and they are sent by
an automated Trojan.
Just delete all 4678+
| On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Erik Cominolli wrote in
| <<
[email protected]>>
|
| >Over the past week, I've been getting thousands of emails
| >claiming to be from microsoft telling me that there is a
| >patch attached to this email. I know this isn't true and
| >someone has a virus but how do I track them down? The
| >email headers are coming from dozens of places. Should I
| >just shut down my email account and start over or is
| >there a way to fix this. These are like 116kb attachments
| >and my pc is geting quite bogged down. I have 4678 of
| >them right now. I called Verio, who hosts my email server
| >and they said they can show me the email server that the
| >mail came from but that's it. How do I stop this madness?
|
| These emails are coming from one or more computers that
have your email
| address and are infected with the Swen virus . The
attachments _are_ the
| virus.
|
|
http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=helpCenter&hcName=swen
|
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/[email protected]
| l
|
| Some ISPs, like mine, remove the attachment but that still
leaves a lot
| of rubbish email to be downloaded so the answer is not to
download it.
| Most ISPs use POP3 for email delivery where the emails are
stored in
| your mailbox on the ISPs mail server and your email
software initiates
| download to your computer. The MailWasher app that's been
mentioned sits
| between you and the ISPs mail server and displays all the
email (subject
| lines) waiting for you so you can manually delete the
rubbish and then
| only download the genuine email. I found scanning and
deleting a lot of
| emails every time I wanted to collect mail rather tedious
so I use a
| different strategy as follows:
|
| 1. Most of the Swen mailings have the word 'SUBJECT' in
the header
| rather than the normal 'Subject' so setting my email
reader to reject on
| SUBJECT automatically removes more than 95% plus of the
Swen email and
| it's now a minor chore to delete the few that get
downloaded.
|
| 2. I reject on email that isn't addressed to me. Don't ask
| apparently the intricacies of email headers is such that
you can get
| email that doesn't appear to be openly addressed to you.
|
| By 'reject' I mean that my email software checks the email
headers while
| they are still on the ISPs server and then deletes them if
they don't
| pass the checks.
|
| Of course, you have to have a proper email/news reader.
Most people use
| the horrible Outlook Express - otherwise known as Outlook
Distress, or
| the Virus Vector. I suggest you evaluate other
email/newsreader
| applications.
|
| --
| Richard Mason
