Theos-Talk Archives (December 2004 Message tt00209)

samblo@cs.com wrote:
> This is the "Real Samblo," --Who ever sent the E-mail post about "Photo's" 
> is an impostor, I sent no such post. Eldon, please look into this ASAP. If you 
> notice the Screen Name is not identical to my regular (since 1999) Screen 
> Name "Samblo." I am reporting this to CompuServe also.
I send this so often, I should probably keep a copy as a reference post:

Short version: These days, having your name on the "From" field of an 
email with an attached virus is pretty good evidence that it did NOT 
come from you.

Long version: It used to be that viruses were eliminated by the 
infected party, finding a bunch of returned emails or warnings from 
recipients, checking out his or her machine, and getting rid of this. 
Virus authors, not liking this, came up with an alternative. The "from" 
field on emails is not fixed; there is good reason for this (for 
example, I have several email addresses from several different domains, 
but can only use the SMTP server on the network into which I am logged). 
So what virus authors did was to not only have the virus send the 
message to every email address it could find on the infected computer, 
it also put found email addresses on the "From:" field, to further 
confuse matters.

Bart