I was sent a tip that suggested creating a fake contact "!0000&qu

I was sent a tip that suggested creating a fake contact "!0000" in my address book to keep e-mail worms from spreading. Does this trick really work?

This question was answered on September 17, 2001. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

Most of you have likely received one of many variations of an e-mail message that claims to be a tip for tricking the current generation of auto-sending 'Mass Mailing' worms, such as the 'Love Bug' or 'Sircam'

The trick involves creating a bogus contact "!0000" in your e-mail address book without an e-mail address The premise is that when a mass-mailing worm tries to send itself out to everyone in the address book, it will fail because the first entry in your address book does not have an e-mail address.

The resulting error message, "This message could not be sent Please check your Address Book and make sure all of the recipients have valid e-mail addresses" is supposed to act as an alert to the user The message is then sent to your Outbox as undeliverable so that you could identify it as the culprit

While this may sound like a pretty credible process, there are a couple of major problems with it.

First of all, it assumes the worm will try to send itself to everyone (a.k.a 'send all') in address book in alphabetical order Unfortunately, most of the current mass-mailing worms will randomly select individual addresses from the address book in no particular order, often skipping the first entry.

As a virus/worm writer, it would be very simple to overcome this 'trick' by simply skipping the first address and sending to all others, so even if it did work well, it wouldn't for long.

Some versions of the tip suggest the use of the email address "[email protected]" for the !0000 contact This is even worse, because if any email address (real or not) is included with the contact, the entire tip fails no matter what The result would be that the worm would actually go out to every address in the address book with the exception of the [email protected] address which would simply "bounce" because it is undeliverable

Another reason to question these types of tips is when they reference an authoritative source, such as an ex-FBI agent, a government official or a CEO of a tech firm Vmyths.com refers to this blind trusting of e-mail sources as 'False Authority Syndrome'.

Real information concerning the battle against viruses will always appear on multiple web sites; specifically those ran by anti-virus companies It would be a good idea to start questioning any information that is sent to you via e-mail unless you can verify it from multiple trusted web sites No real information exists only in e-mail messages; it will always be posted at web sites if it has credence

Another problem with falling for these 'quick fixes' is that it opens users up to hoaxes such as the recent sulfnbk.exe virus urban legend that prompted users to delete actual Windows files.

I received no less than 25 different messages that professed the credibility of this 'tip' which could easily fool the average user into thinking it was valid.

There are much easier ways to thwart these mass-mailing worms Keep your anti-virus software up-to-date (check at least once a month) and don't open a file attachment unless you know exactly what it is!

Remember, you will most likely get a worm from someone you know; so don't assume that you can trust anyone If there is no specific reference to an attached file that explains what it contains, don't open it.

If you have a question about a file attachment, reply to the sender asking the nature of the attachment Not only will you get the info you need, you may also be alerting the sender that they have contracted a worm.

As a sender, if you are attaching files to e-mail messages, be sure to make specific reference to the attachment in the body of the message with a brief explanation of the contents.

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