A question from LeeAnn:

Question: I've read where sometimes you can get email from someone you know but it's really not from them. A friend of mine kept sending me viruses but she swears she never sent them. How can this be? Thanks, I enjoy your newsletter!

Answer: Your friend is most likely telling you the truth, or they are infected with a virus that is sending out mails without their knowledge! If someone is infected with certain virus, such as Klez, the virus will send itself out to everyone in the infected users address book. To make it even harder to identify who actually is infected with the virus, the virus even fakes the "from" field, so it looks like it is from someone else! So, in the case of your friend, there are a couple of possibilities. Click here to see more!

First, your friend could be the one who has one of these type of virus, and the virus is automatically sending the mails to everyone in her address book without her knowledge. Or, a mutual friend may have both you and your friend's address in their address book, and the virus is sending to you and spoofing the from field to make it look like it is from the other friend!

What can you do? You can look at the headers of the email with the virus and see what domain they are coming from. If they match your friend's domain, then the friend may be the infected one. If it matches another domain of a mutual friend of both of you, that may be who is infected. Information on reading email headers can be found by clicking here.

To learn more about these type of virus, and how to protect yourself, click here to visit our Virus Help and Information page. There is a great free online virus scan; recommend it to your friend!

Also, do the following: Open your Outlook Express, click Tools, then Options. Now click the Security Tab and make certain there is a check in the box next to "Warm me when other applications try to send mail as me." Click here to see .

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