# Oh crap! virus?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-crap-virus/242473>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 28, 2004, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-crap-virus/242473 "2004-04-28T13:11:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-crap-virus/242473/1 "2004-04-28T13:11:39Z")

</div>

I’m checking my mail this morning, and I have 2 messages in my inbox that say “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender.” I don’t know whether or not I ever sent anything to anyone in the last few days, but both of these have attachments. I know I didn’t send anyone anything with anything attached. Is it safe to open these, or would I fall victim to the latest virus scam? (Sorry if it’s obvious, but I haven’t kept up with the news recently…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RandomLetters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8edcca/32.png) [@RandomLetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RandomLetters)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-crap-virus/242473/2 "2004-04-28T13:16:20Z")

</div>

Don’t open those attachments - you don’t know whats in them, so they are not safe. I would reccommend getting anti-virus program - AVG or Avast are good, free ones, and scanning your system, to make sure you machine isn’t sending out viruses without you knowing. Or it could be some other infected machine is spewing out viruses, and faking the “From:” column, to make it look like you are the virus source. If the latter is the case, than don’t worry about it.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-crap-virus/242473/3 "2004-04-28T13:17:17Z")

</div>

Delete them. It’s likely someone else’s infected machine that is sending the virus to random people in the their address book.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-crap-virus/242473/4 "2004-04-28T13:20:20Z")

</div>

Ok, thanks everyone. I was worried… I’ll just delete them… I have norton AV, but AVG is free, right? I don’t want to pay for updates any more…

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-crap-virus/242473/5 "2004-04-28T13:25:44Z")

</div>

AVG is free and very good, but not infallible; a good supplement is to carry out occasional online scans at both:  
[Trend’s Housecall](http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_frame.asp)  
and  
[Panda ActiveScan](http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm)

I did this yesterday and both of the online scans found things that AVG had missed.