Pesky virus

[John Thompson]

Michael Sullivan wrote:

> I've got a small problem.  Last week I received in my
> non-espersunited.com email account an email from someone I don't know
> with an .exe file as an attachment.  Naturally I assumed that this was a
> virus, and wrote back to the email address it was from informing them
> that they had a virus.  I've received several similar emails on through
> the week, most were unique but all followed the same format:  One line
> of text and then the attachment link, usually a .exe or a .zip file.  I
> haven't opened any of them, but in the past couple of days I've begun
> seeing them in my espersunited.com email accounts.  I wasn't too worried
> about it until this morning, when I received a message from another SMTP
> server saying that my mail was undeliverable to some person's email
> account.  I looked at the message sent and it was indeed from me, but
> the message body held the same one line and thesame EXE/ZIP file
> attachment as the ones I'd received from multiple sources.  I use
> evolution as my email client.  Could I be infected with this virus? 

No; this is most likely a "joe-job" 
(http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/J/joe-job.html)

By replying to the original email/attachment, you let the spammer know 
that your email address was valid, and therefore a good candidate for 
them to use in a joe-job.

-- 

-John (john at os2.dhs.org)