Email Virus Q & A

Why am I getting an email from IT support staff that says: "Please follow the instructions in the attached file in order to keep your computer safe. "
         This is because someone has an infected computer that has your email address in their address book.  You do not have to worry about infection because IT runs continuous Norton protection.  Just trash the email.

Why do I get an email bounced back to me indicating that I have sent an email, even though I have not sent any emails to that person? 
       This happens normally because a virus was in one of your email attachments that you opened.  When an attachment that contains a virus is usually opened it goes through your Address Book and sends an email with an attachment to someone in your Address Book, without your knowledge. 
       The virus usually makes a claim on all the addresses in the Address Book of the computer it invades, it then replicates itself in messages to all the addresses it has claimed from the address book.

Why am I getting emails bounced back to me from people I did not send email to?
       If you did not send any emails and you received a bounced back email, what you are seeing is the result of Sobig or similar viruses. These viruses may be infecting the PCs of your friends or people you know, and these people happen to have your email address in their address book. What this virus does on their machine, is that it tries to spread itself by sending itself to many other users using their address book.  It also forges a "From:" address using a random address from the infected system's address book (which may be your email address!). So others get email sent to them with your name on it (but you did not send it, your "friends" infected system sent the mail out). So that is why other systems then reject the mail and bounce it back to you with the above messages. That is what you are seeing.

How can I safe guard myself from these email viruses?
        DO NOT OPEN an e-mail attachment unless you know who sent it. Even then, it's not totally safe, as a sneaky virus that has infected a friend's computer can access the e-mail address book, send a message to everyone, and attach itself. To be completely safe, scan the attachment with your anti-virus software BEFORE you open it.
        If you receive a suspicious message, delete it immediately from your Inbox. When you delete a message, however, it's still on your system. Go into the Deleted Mail folder and delete the message again to permanently remove it.

Do I manually have to scan or remove viruses from my work computer?
       We run Norton Antivirus which runs actively so it catches the virus before it ever gets to your machine.  You will get an email stating that Norton has cleaned/removed a virus from a message.