What in the world is going on with these weird emails?
| Item | Symptoms: |
| 1 | Your inbox says that you sent
an email to somebody you do not know. The failure message comes to your
inbox saying the message was not able to be delivered. You never sent that person any email to begin with! |
| 2 | Your inbox says you sent an
email to somebody, and that message was rejected because it had a virus.
But you checked your PC and you don't have any viruses! |
| 3 | Your inbox says that somebody sent you a message with an attachment, but when you try to open the attachment, it is just text, or it is gone! |
| 4 | |
To understand these messages, you need to first understand what is going on with Viruses and how they are sent.
Anatomy of a typical email virus
Scenario #1 and #2 from the symptoms list above
| Where it Happens | What Happens | |
| 1 | On Somebody's PC (other than yours and other than PCR's) | You send somebody that you know an email at some point in your lifetime. This person reads your email. From now on, this person's PC has *your* email address on the hard drive in this other person's PC. |
| 2 | On Somebody's PC (other than yours and other than PCR's) | That person you know, who is not at your house or at the Prudential Offices, opens up some random email message (not a message that came from you) that has a virus in it. That virus now infects their PC quietly. Now that their PC is infected, the Virus Sending Program looks through that person's hard drive, and Presto! It finds YOUR valid email address, along with the 250 other valid email addresses from all of the friends and associates of that person. |
| 3 | On Somebody's PC (other than yours and other than PCR's) | Now that Virus Sending Program has a perfectly good PC under its control, and 250 perfectly good email addresses. Now, it starts randomly sending messages out "from" one of the addresses, and "to" one of the other addresses. All of the emails have a shiny new copy of the virus attached to it. It does this over and over and over and over and over, mixing up the "from" and "to" randomly. Relentlessly. Like the Terminator. It can't Think! It does not Feel! It will send messages out FOREVER until it is found and killed! Guess what the problem is? In these scenarios #1 and #2, IT'S NOT ON YOUR PC or on ANY PC AT PRUDENTIAL! It's on one of your external family, friend's or associate's PC's, which we cannot control or repair. |
| 4 | On Your PC or on the remote PCR Servers | You now sign on to read your email. Inside your Inbox, you find error messages from email servers, telling you that they were unable to deliver a message that "you" tried to send. Since these messages were never sent FROM you, but the Virus used your valid email address, the remote server sends back the error report to the only address it knows about - Your valid address. Thus, you get frustrated, and you begin to wonder if YOU have a virus or if the PCR Server has a virus. That is always possible - which is why you MUST have valid, unexpired, working AntiVirus software on your PC's. Prudential Cranbrook Realtors has this AntiVirus protection on all of the Servers and Desktops in the company. We work hard to make sure that you are 100% protected, so you should assume that these email messages are happening on devices OUTSIDE of the PCR network. As I said, infections are *possible* from within, but rather unlikely. |
| 5 | On Your PC or on the remote PCR Servers | You then delete these "NDR" emails (NDR stands for Non Delivery Report) and you try to move on with your life. A few minutes go by, and more messages come in. You don't know who to call about the virus problem, because any one of 250 (or more) people could be infected, and that list of people that the Virus Sending Program is using may have people that your associate knows, but that you don't know. What a frustrating mess, right? Exactly. That's why it's call a Virus. It is DESIGNED to disrupt, frustrate and otherwise madden you. Hang in there - there is hope. Until all Virus Writers are rounded up and hogtied, the best you will be able to do is MAKE SURE that it is definitely NOT YOU who has the PC with the Virus. Have good AV software, update it, and Scan often. |
| I feel your pain: |
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| Things *could* be worse.. |
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Scenario #3 from the symptoms list above
| Item | Symptom | Description |
| 1 | ||
| 2 | ||
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 5 | ||