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 every address there, thus infecting all those computers.
This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer but it will stop your computer from using your address book to spread it further. It will also 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" or "New Person" just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email addresses.
Second: In the window where you would type your friend's FIRST name, type in !000 (that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros). In the window below where it prompts you to enter the new email address, type in WormAlert@bob.com actually any "@com" will work.
Third: Then complete everything by clicking add, enter, OK, etc.
Now, here's what you've done and why it works: The "name" !000 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 !000, it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered (WormAlert). 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 InBox almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to WormAlert 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.
Pretty slick, huh?
Gil Knutson