Micro Computer Service - Brockville

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You received a Virus from Micro Computer Service

Welcome to the world of Email Spoofing. For those unfamiliar with the concept I'll explain a little.

You open up your email box and notice Spam, a Virus, or just plain garbage that appears to come from a friend of yours. You immediately reply to that friend and let them know they have a virus, or ask them why they are sending you a Viagra message. Your friend is puzzled because they did not send you any email about Viagra, and they just performed a virus scan this morning and things checked out ok.

What has happened is the following:

An email harvesting server sitting somewhere has collected your email address, and your friend's email address either from you or them entering an email address on some website, or a forward of a message going through a harvesting server that had dozens of addresses in it. These email addresses are sold to advertising companies and used to send you spam. This spam can appear to be coming from anybody who is on that list, but they are ranked addresses. In other words, 20 email addresses contained in the same forwarded message stand to reason that these people know each other, or are in close proximity (ie. a friend of a friend). So, when an advertising email application selects a name to send a spam to it will look for a name that is "in the same batch". By doing such, it appears that the email you are looking at has come from a friend, or somebody you possibly know.
The unfortunate part of this is, some email-borne viruses operate the same way, so the message with a virus in it you see from a friend is not from a friend at all

How Do We Avoid This?

  • when you forward a message, strip out the dozens of email addresses already in the message. This will also prevent a friend wading through a sea of "header" information to read a legitimate message you are forwarding.
  • avoid email helper applications. These are the applications that allow you to use smiley faces, pictured backgrounds, sounds and other elements buried in email messages. A few good examples of this are SmileyCentral and Incredimail.
  • if at all possible, try to never use your email address on servers offering "Jokes of the Day" and such things. There are some legitimate services such as Weather Services or Virus Warnings that email you daily that are fine, but most of the Joke and Picture sites are nothing but harvesters. There is usually Privacy Information associated with these web sites - READ IT - don't just click Accept.
  • don't allow your email address to remain on some website in a forum or guestbook.
  • educate your friends - have them read this article!

    Our Email Policy

    If you receive an email from ANYBODY on our domain name, and it contains a virus or any malicious code, you can be assured it did not come from us. Having a website is a guaranteed threat of having an email address spoofed, or the domain portion (mcsbrockville.com) used elsewhere. I have received an email from myself many, many times - email I know I didn't send myself. Here is our policy on email:
    • We never display the email address of anybody visiting our site. Email addresses are used once and then discarded.
    • We never keep a log of visitors that can be accessed by harvesters.
    • We use spoof-proof email display names on our website (they are pictures, not text ... as below)
    • We never use mailto: in our HTML coding, which can be, and is easily spoofed
    • We never send files through email to ANYBODY unless we have previously confirmed this on the phone.
    • We never instruct people to visit some foreign site and type in anything for access
    • We never send out 'doom and gloom' email about the pending threats on your computer
    • We will never instruct you to delete files
    • We won't ask for credit card number or banking information in email


    • Last updated by Administrator (admin)  on Jul 22 2006  at 07:55
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