How to protect your e-mail address book

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 everyone in there, 

 thus infecting all your friends and associates.

This trick won't keep the virus from getting

into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book

to spread further, and it will 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,' 

 just as you would do if you were adding 

 a new friend to your list of email addresses.  

 In the window where you would type your

friend's first name, type in 'A'.

For the screen name or email address, 

 type AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA

Now, here's what you've done and why it works:

The 'name 'A' 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.

When it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA, 

 it will be undeliverable 

 because of the phony email address you entered. 

 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 In Box almost immediately. 

 Hence, 

 if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA 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!