ADMIN: Those strange messages

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 164424

Greetings from Hexquarters!  

At least some people have noticed some rather odd messages appearing on 
HPForGrownups recently - messages with a particular subject heading that reads:  

HOT IRANIAN PERSIAN SEX PICS AND STORIES  

These appear to come from a member of this group. They almost certainly DO NOT come 
from a member of this group, and certainly not from the member who's name appears on 
them.  

Messages like these do circulate the web. These messages are nearly always the product of 
one of a number of e-mail viruses that are circulating around the internet at any time, or the 
product of a deliberate attempt to hijack a persons identity and use it to post.  

Sometimes such messages can contain viruses. These current e-mails do not appear to 
carry a viral payload and so do not appear to pose a threat to listmembers, beyond the fact 
that they are very annoying, but some general advice should still be followed.  

E-mail viruses reproduce themselves by e-mail. The way they typically work is that they raid 
the address book of the e-mail program of an infected computer and send e-mails that look 
like they come from one of the addresses in that address book to other addresses in that 
address book. This means that they appear to come from someone who almost certainly did 
not send them and has no control over the fact they have been sent. But because that 
address may be that of a member of this list, yahoogroups allows the message to get onto 
the list, thinking it must be a message from the person whose name appears on it.  

This list is set up to strip off any attachments to e-mails, so the virus never reaches this list 
and you cannot become infected by the messages on this list for that reason. They are 
annoying, but they are not dangerous.  

However, there are plenty of other ways that such a message could infect you - the virus 
could send itself as if it came from the HPForGrownups at yahoogroups.com address if that is 
in the address book of an infected computer, for example, and it could be sent to you from 
anyone who has your address in their address book.  

So it is very important that all users of Windows based computers have up to date anti-virus 
software installed on their computer. While viruses can be written for non-Windows 
computers, they are much rarer, so this is most important for Windows users.  

There are a wide range of anti-virus products available and it is not our place to suggest 
which one you should use. But there is an anti-virus program called AVG which is available 
free to home users at: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 that is certainly worth looking at if you 
have no other protection.  

For now, the most important things to note are:

(1) The person whose name appears on these e-mails as the sender is not responsible for 
what is occurring - their identity has been hijacked in some way.  

(2) It is unlikely these messages pose any threat to any person on the list beyond their 
annoyance value, which is considerable, but people can take precautions if they are worried.  

Shaun AKA Crikey Elf
For the List Elves