[lbo-talk] Query re: Bizarre "Returned Mail" Messages

[Kelley]

It's a virus/worm. The authors are doing one of two things (I didn't look 
at it closely enough to say which, but it doesn't matter). 1. They're 
writing the virus so that it looks like a bounce message, hoping you'll 
open the attachment to find out what message was, ostensibly, bounced. 2. 
Someone on a list you post to, a friend, a colleage, whatever was infected 
with a virus. The worm then replicates itself by sending itself to everyone 
in the infected user's address book. As it does so, it forges the from 
address, randomly selecting any old address in the infected user's address 
book. Now, it looks like you sent the virus and every time the virus gets 
sent someplace where there's a virus scanner, that virus scanner is set to 
notify you that your mail (NOT!) was infected with a virus so it didn't 
reach the recipient. 3. some combination of 1 and 2.

Set a filter rule to dump them all in the trash. Find some common 
characteristic, like "Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details".

I feel your pain, my real estate agent was infected last summer. When the 
worm replicated, I was the lucky winner of the Forged From Address 
Sweepstakes. I was receiving 100s of these things a day for two months 
until it finally subsided.

Kelley