A non-techie has emailed me (another non-techie!) this. Is it true and does it work?

Any comments most welcome. Thanks.

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR ADDRESS BOOK!

As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your email address book, and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friends and associates.

This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your System.

Here's what you do:

First, open your address book and click on "new contact," just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email addresses. In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in "A".

For the screen name or email address, type "[email protected]".

Now, here's what you've done and why it works:

The "name" "A" will be placed at the top of your address book as entry#1.

This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends.

But, when it tries to send itself to [email protected], it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered. If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and your friends will not be infected.

Here's the second great advantage of this method:

If an email cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your In Box almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to [email protected] could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the

worm virus in your system. You can then take steps to get rid of it!

If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further

Sounds like boswellox to me - in simple terms, a mail client simply sends the mail to the mail server, it doesn't then wait around for a response that it has been delivered before sending the next mail. Just like putting letters in a letterbox, if one of them has the wrong address it doesn't stop you putting the rest of your letters in the letterbox.

And...someone figures out how to write a worm to exploit your address book, but *doesn't* think of a way to move onto the next address if one of the entries is invalid? Unlikely I'd say...

Rob.