Baware some in the herp world is sending viruses! PLEASE READ!

Hey Everyone,,
Just a quick heads up.. someone in the herp world is sending viruses,, i had 4 in my in box yesterday,, and 14 today,, they are all not all herp related but a great number are. Here are a few examples i have gotten,, I got a friend of mine to decompile one of the messages on another computer,, and they are viruses,,,
here are a few example email adresses..:

quadrapets@aol.com
mccarthyboas@attbi.com
alabamaretilerescue@hotmail.com
philip@rebelscum.com
turtletown@aol.com
herphomes@earthlink.net
robin913@robisreptiles.com
Classic@dumerils.com
and many more...
( and still getting them)


Oh I just got another one,,( while i was typing this,,) i may have found the culprit!
look at this, does it look familiar!?

ADMIN@UPSTATEEXOTICS.COM
the one from them is a Re: Re: and i have never sent them an email,,!

THIS CLOWN IS SENDING VIRUSES,,,!

I cannot believe this guy sent me a virus,,
( must be for my input on the thread about him)
Well better luck next time !
and you know what i have never even met this guy...!
if anyone want copies of these emails,, ( or questions the validity of what i am saying please just drop me a line and i will forward them to you,,,( but don't open the attachment what ever you do)!someone has got a lot of free time on there hands!

Viruses commonly fake the from addresses. They will pull a list of addresses from an infected computer's address book and websites on an internet cache. Since a reptile nut would visit many websites related to herps they will pull a large number of email addresses from those sites in normal communications. If a reptile person's computer gets infected both the from address and the to addresses will be largerly reptile oriented.

There are been a number of worms hitting the web hard the last few weeks (mainstream news has been covering them). It's really hard to say that someone is specifically targeting you without tracing the header information of the email (as long as it's not forged).

The support email for another company I own has been getting slammed with over 100 virus-laden emails per day in the last week or so (since the email address is on a number of websites). It is starting to calm down in the last 24 hours.

Darn,,
I was feeling kinda special that i had pissed someone off enough that they took there time to send me a virus..!

oh well better luck next time,,,!

There's another related thread about this:

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...threadid=24209

I think I read that some people were receiving upwards of 900 infected messages a day or something.

Time to disable cookies and clear out address books.

I have received a virus a couple of times with my own email as the from address. Many of the new viruses use the infected computer's address book to spoof the from addy while sending itself to the others. It's apparently random selection but sometimes it gets the to and from the same.

The thing is it's highly likely that none of those address are really infected. I've been accused at times of being infected, and it can get hard to explain to some people how these new viruses work and convince them that I am not.
It takes an individual with a sad existence to have nothing better to do than write and distribute these programs to begin with.

This doesn't seem to be restricted to the herp world either. I run a small home business and one of my suppliers has been getting over 100 per hour!

I think this is so funny!

i just got another virus email from myself.!
it has from and to, being me!
i never downloaded the attachment,,, on any of them,, but i think when my friend i sent it to decompiled it, he had to download it,, and my email adress was on the original email and i just forwarded it to him,,,
so if anyone gets an email from me with an attachment that you are not expecting,,, please delete it! ( my email address is :sales@sunsetdragonranch.com)


i am just rolling around, laughing about this,,, it is too funny,,
Clay i guess me and you are in the same boat,,

you know if the guy who invented this virus would use him talent for good,, he could cure cancer,,,
i hate the guy who invented the virus,, but he is a genius!

~I, too, have been getting virus loaded emails, as well as, emails from people I don't know telling me I sent them a virus!!

~So, today I spent the day installing a top grade anti-virus program with a firewall and cleaning all my files. I found the culprits... A couple of fireworks screensavers I had downloaded.

~You'd think people would have better things to dowith their time...I know I do.

I once received a virus in an attached file. I was wise enough to download the attached file to a floppy and to scan it before opening it because it was an unexpected file and AOL notified me that the type of file could contain a virus. While AOL would not scan it, my Norton AV did quite well.

I contacted the guy from who I received it, a coworker. He was temporarily assigned to a rather secure office of a FlawedBut Investigative government law enforcement agency. It came from his email account on that agency's computer. He immediately figured he knew from whom it had originally come. He then scanned the gov't. pc three times with three different virus scan programs and found nothing. It took about 3 or 4 hours per scan - lots of big files on the hard drive.

It was just another of these viruses that steal address books and send themselves to everyone in the address book using one of the other names in the book as the sender. I had been pretty upset, and so was my friend when he had thought he may have been responsible in some way. We both learned a lesson about viruses and about blaming others for sending them. Now I only blame myself for opening or downloading them or for not keeping Norton AV up to date.

To be safer - I make sure that my Norton AV is update frequently. I keep the auto scan on constantly. I have the settings set to the highest security level. I keep my fingers crossed to, and have garlic all around it.....

Best regards,
Glenn B

Besides the use of a very good Anti Virus software people should really use a firewall as well. Manytime our software is designed to connect while we are online to search for updates all of this takes place behind the scenes. And during some of this contact a worm or trojan can reach out and touch someone so to speak.

All of this considering I just spend three days cleaning my computer of worms, viruses, and trojans. I do have to say glad this computer is mine and mine alone since I though Rich had gone to new lows with letting the porn sites advertise on the banners. But hey I find its a case of my puter slipping in and replacing what really is supposed to be there.

Sad to say there are some really creative people who could be better off being constructive with their intelligence. And yet most people (that I have met) who can write this type code are not what you would call functioning in normal society either. But then again their IQ is about 50 notches above mine so maybe its me that is abnomal.