Help with mailer-daemon question

[JD]

In the last two days I have received six mailer-daemon e mails informing me
that I sent an infected attachment to a friend at AOL and that it was being
returned to me. This person is in my OE Address Book, but I have not
communicated with her for a very long time.
What does this mean and what can or should I do about it?

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Delete the email message(s). Apparently, someone who
had your email address stored in their Address Book
became infected with a virus or worm.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------*----------------

"JD" wrote:

| In the last two days I have received six mailer-daemon e mails informing me
| that I sent an infected attachment to a friend at AOL and that it was being
| returned to me. This person is in my OE Address Book, but I have not
| communicated with her for a very long time.
| What does this mean and what can or should I do about it?

[JD]

Thank you for your reply. I have run NAV, Ad-Aware, and Spybot and my
computer is, I hope, "clean."
Is there anything else I can do? Maybe contact all of my correspondents and
ask them to check their "Sent Mail" folders?
Is there a way to "track down" the miscreant?
"Carey Frisch [MVP]" > wrote in message
...
> Delete the email message(s). Apparently, someone who
> had your email address stored in their Address Book
> became infected with a virus or worm.
>
> --
> Carey Frisch
> Microsoft MVP
> Windows - Shell/User
> Microsoft Community Newsgroups
> news://msnews.microsoft.com/
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------*----------------
>
> "JD" wrote:
>
> | In the last two days I have received six mailer-daemon e mails informing
> me
> | that I sent an infected attachment to a friend at AOL and that it was
> being
> | returned to me. This person is in my OE Address Book, but I have not
> | communicated with her for a very long time.
> | What does this mean and what can or should I do about it?
>

[Panda_man]

I am not so sure ...I think you can be infected with a worm .


1) Did you recently received a strange message from either known or unknown
telling you to open the attachment like ZIP or EXE file... ?

2) Is your Norton updated ?

3) Receive second opinion on your malware status:

Check your PC using:

http://www.activescan.com
Panda Software free Active Scan,where you can check your
PC for ALL TYPES of security threats and clean viruses and worms


http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner
Kaspersky free online scanner and checker for suspicious files.


4)
Also ,as you use Norton you might want to increase your protection.
If you use Norton 2006 version ,you are already much more protected than the
old versions.However ,if you use Norton 2003,2004 or 2005 version you
probably know that Norton's Live Update offers only weekly updates which is
very very bad if there is an epidemic of new threats (such as Sober ,
Mitgleider ,Netsky ,MyDoom.........)
That's why ,if you use version 2003/2004/2005 you could be interested to
understand how to use Symantec's Intelligent Updater in combination with Live
Update:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/sharedtech.nsf/docid/2002021908382713?OpenDocument&src=sec_web_nam

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/download.html


If Panda and Kaspersky (and your Norton) say you are clean , you can receive
SPAM or someone else is infected.Make sure you read step 4)
:)

Panda_man
--
Prevention is always better than cure !
Panda TruPrevent - the most intelligent technology to combat unknown malware
http://www.pandasoftware.com
http://pandaman.hit.bg


"JD" wrote:

> Thank you for your reply. I have run NAV, Ad-Aware, and Spybot and my
> computer is, I hope, "clean."
> Is there anything else I can do? Maybe contact all of my correspondents and
> ask them to check their "Sent Mail" folders?
> Is there a way to "track down" the miscreant?
> "Carey Frisch [MVP]" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Delete the email message(s). Apparently, someone who
> > had your email address stored in their Address Book
> > became infected with a virus or worm.
> >
> > --
> > Carey Frisch
> > Microsoft MVP
> > Windows - Shell/User
> > Microsoft Community Newsgroups
> > news://msnews.microsoft.com/
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------Â*----------------
> >
> > "JD" wrote:
> >
> > | In the last two days I have received six mailer-daemon e mails informing
> > me
> > | that I sent an infected attachment to a friend at AOL and that it was
> > being
> > | returned to me. This person is in my OE Address Book, but I have not
> > | communicated with her for a very long time.
> > | What does this mean and what can or should I do about it?
> >
>
>
>

[Malke]

JD wrote:

> Thank you for your reply. I have run NAV, Ad-Aware, and Spybot and my
> computer is, I hope, "clean."
> Is there anything else I can do? Maybe contact all of my
> correspondents and ask them to check their "Sent Mail" folders?
> Is there a way to "track down" the miscreant?
> "Carey Frisch [MVP]" > wrote in message
> ...

It does sound like your machine is clean, especially if you didn't run
anything from that email and all your antivirus/antispyware programs
are current versions and the definitions are up-to-date.

There really isn't any way you can tell where the email came from
because many email viruses spoof the "From" field. A simple example
would be if you and I had a mutual friend (let's call him Fred) but you
and I didn't know each other. Fred's machine is infected with one of
the many email viruses. Because both our addresses are in Fred's
addressbook, the virus sends you an infected email and it looks like it
comes from me. You contact me angrily and I tell you that since I don't
run Windows, my machine isn't infected.

So just delete those emails unread and don't worry about it.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

[Nathan Eady]

> There really isn't any way you can tell where the email came from

You can tell what IP address it came from, if you know how to read
mail headers. The From: field, however, is meaningless in this scenario.