Side effects include paranoia

Posted on January 27, 2004 by Gene

As a Mac user, I’m again immune from the latest virus being zapped around the world. But I’m not immune to one side effect: there are obviously some PC users out there who have my e-mail address in their address books, because I’ve started getting some “return to sender” mail courtesy of virus-checking programs. The worm replicates itself and sends e-mails out spoofing the addresses of people in PC address books. Of course, I don’t have a clue who these people are that received e-mails with my name on them, but I still worry that they might think I’m a bad person who is sending them a virus. In fact, the e-mails didn’t come from me in the first place, but still… I don’t want anyone to not like me, you know?

Update Jan. 28: This rant sheds a little more light on the dubious practice of virus scanning software that generates an e-mail back to the spoofed sender address, thus clogging the Net further by creating more unsolicited and unhelpful mail:

Spam is basically defined as “unsolicited junk e-mail”. Unsolicited, as in you did not request the person/company to send you mail. Junk, as in it contains no valuable content or information. When an anti-virus program from a remote system mails you out of the blue, tells you that it blocked a virus YOU sent, tells you that you are likely infected with a virus and advertises itself, the remote site is sending you spam. In the case of the latest worm, myself and others have received more spam from Anti-Virus products than the worm itself! As you read this, Anti-Virus companies are responsible for products that are sending out more unwanted mail than the worm itself. The most damning mail from these products not only purport to “warn you of infection”, but they go so far as to advertise the product to you. This is unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE, aka “spam”) in its purest form.