Spam Viruses

Spam spam spam...wonderful spam. Everybody loves getting tons of random emails about random things we never even wanted to know existed. It's even better when we receive it from someone we know and trust. Without thinking much of it we click on the link that says something like "I saw your picture on this website!" and now suddenly, our computers are host to some very unsavory guests.

Where do these come from, and what do they do?

The main purpose behind these spam viruses can be any number of things. Sometimes it's to gather important information off of your computer, damage system files to cause problems, and many times it's just to annoy the heck out of people.

These viruses can come from plenty of places. One of their main methods for spreading is by email, using your address book. They will use two email addresses at a time, one for the sender, and one for the recipient. That way whenever someone receives this spam message, it shows up as coming from someone else entirely, and it's very difficult to trace back to the infected computer.

If you are very fortunate the virus might not be placing a random address in the sender spot, meaning the virus is on your computer and you can do something about it.

What can you do about one that isn't on your computer? Regrettably not a whole lot. One option would be to email everyone on your address book and suggest they check their computers for viruses. Definitely not an appealing way to spend the day for those with a large address book. You can also try contacting your email provider and asking them about spam filtering. Beyond that you just have to hope that whoever has the virus gets some de-worming medicine for their computer.

So as always, be careful of any emails you receive that look suspicious. If you're unsure if they are safe try contacting the person that sent it to you to ask, or do a Google search on the subject line of the email to see if it is a known spam message.

Brendan
- The Man Behind the Curtain