pele

I have just installed Norton Internet security 3.0 because I was sendig people a virus which I didn't even know I had... I ran the virus check & it said I had no viruses, then this morning I get a mail saying I've sent this virus to some one else - help! what do I do now...

ScoobyDoo555

I suggest going to Symantec's website. and getting the latest virus definitions for the Mac.....

Best of luck

Dan

pele

I did that before I started the virus check...

IanW

Pele,

The chances are that you are not actually sending the virus, and it is infact your e-mail address being 'spoofed' by someone with a virus.

Ian

pele

So how do I stop someone doing that then?

IanW

You cant stop someone from spoofing your mail address.

For example today i have had something in the region of 60 - 70 messages today telling me that i have sent a virus.

The main problem is actually the system administrators who send out a mail to the alleged sender of the virus, it just causes concern like it has done to you when you dont have the virus.

pele

Thats what I had before I put the AV on, then nothing for a day, then just one.... so do I actually have a virus?

IanW

If your virus scanner says that you dont have a virus, then you probably dont have a virus. You are just getting notifications of mails that have been spoofed using your mail as the from address. It is very easy to spoof a mail address.

angrynorth

Pele, Currently recorded Mac OS X virus's = 0

You don't have a virus, and if some spoon is spoofing your email address, there is little you can do to prevent it that I know of.

Sorry not much I can suggest.

pele

Thanks for your help guy's If I could get hold of that person I'd cut it's ******* hands off at the mo - probably the same person who has sent 500+ junk mail ads per day for the last month or so to this e-mail address...

Markus

Here's my 2 cents (canadian of course ) worth on this.

The only current macintosh virus I am aware of would be the MS word "macro" virus, but, from what I know about that, which is not much, it would only infect MS word documents and nothing else, but I could be wrong.

Apart from that, as angrynorth says, there are no current 'real' mac OS viruses, last 'real' virus I remember was the cd autostart worm, which happened, oooh, at least 3 or 4 years ago.

So, what is more likley happening is, as others have said, and I have seen myself, your address is being spoofed by a virus from a PC somewhere and thus it's why you are getting these notifications. I had 200 per day notifications from a company that my email I was sending them had a virus in it, which is total tosh.

One important thing to bear in mind here is that if you DO get a virus email, don't forward it on to anyone, as if they are on a pc, you could infect them. I have done this, mainly as a proof of point to some tech chappies. They sent me a virus, I happily played with it on my mac, viewd the executable, then forwarded the email onto a PC, which was not sufficiently protected, and volia, one infected PC.

JackClark

Go to our search facility here and search for MacOS 24 listed including a Mass Mailer there's plenty of potential for virus writing on Mac's.

angrynorth

Jack I only saw OS9 problems, couldn't find anything that listed OSX.

JackClark

Nothing specific for OSX and if I recall correctly nothing new at all for well over a year. Plenty of Linux based threats though. I think it's something like 90 odd % of new threats are directed at MS operating systems and applications. You'll notice that the Mass Mailer above needs MS Outlook.

If I needed a new PC I'd buy a Mac.