# Where can you send emails you think have viruses on them? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 9, 2003, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466 "2003-01-09T06:44:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Tommyturtle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8491ac/32.png) [@Tommyturtle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tommyturtle)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/1 "2003-01-09T06:44:55Z")
I have been getting weird emails lately with I really suspect viruses on them…they say things like “Hi,This is a IE 6.0 patch I hope you would like it.” and it has an attachment about 86k(Shortcut to MS-DOS Program href.pif) which I never opened and the other one says “This is a funny website I wish you would like it.” with an attachment of 88k(Application bill\_murray8-th[1]) These latest two are the third and fourth ones I have gotten in a week…all from different email addresses…none of them from familiar addresses I thought I had read about a site you could send them to so they could be traced…anyone know what I am talking about or am I full of beans and should just delete them? I have Pegasus so they are not really a threat to me but if they is a way to trace them maybe someone can stop these BOZOs before someone else gets zapped. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/2 "2003-01-09T07:00:08Z")
You’re probably best off just deleting them. I use Yahoo mail for the most part and it does a pretty good job of filtering and trapping viruses unless you intentionally download them and ignore the warnings. I avoid any Microsoft mail client like the plague as they seem to be the ones most often exploited by virus writers. When you get a virus be aware that there are a lot that spoof email addresses so the “from” may not reflect who it came from at all. Looking at the full header may reveal the actual sender in the return path. I’ll send a note to that person and suggest they check for vuruses as one may have come from their machine. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/3 "2003-01-09T07:02:54Z")
Not sure what those are, haven’t seen them come up as viruses alerts before. Nowadays though a lot of viruses spread by themselves, and people who sent them to you might not have any idea what they are doing. If you want, you can forward the message - without the attachment - to the postmaster of your ISP to see what they can do about it. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/4 "2003-01-09T07:04:59Z")
You will need to include the full header. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/5 "2003-01-09T08:40:33Z")
Mail them to a hotmail account. Hotmail scans for visruses ---
**Author:** ![superfreakicus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@superfreakicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/superfreakicus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/6 "2003-01-09T08:45:04Z")
send them to the white house. ---
**Author:** ![Tommyturtle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8491ac/32.png) [@Tommyturtle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tommyturtle)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2003, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/7 "2003-01-10T23:45:59Z")
I thought there was some specific site that traces emails that had viruses attached. Nobody knows anything about that? Like when your computer gets probed(Zone Alert stops it but logs the attack)and you can send the the log about the attack to an address for them to see if others were probed from the same place and they will send a message to the offenders’ ISP to let them know one of their people is doing this. Isn’t there something similiar for emails too? I could of sworn there was…someone far better than me who could back trace the emails and see if there is a common beginning to find the originators of the viruses? Oh well…if not there really ought to be someone tracing the viruses. It probably wouldn’t stop the new viruses but it might slow down all the copycats and their “me too” screwing around. THEY at least might not have the knowledge to hide as well as the original makers of the viruses. ---
**Author:** ![White\_Lightning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@White\_Lightning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/White_Lightning)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/8 "2003-01-11T00:32:13Z")
I do customer service for a company that sends out a lot of email promotions, so some of our addresses get put on a lot of junk lists. I’ve literally seen hundreds of spammed e-mails exactly as described by the OP over the last couple of weeks. Send them to a hotmail address? Many of them come _from_ hotmail addresses. I get a lot of repeat senders so recently I’ve started flagging them as junk senders so I don’t have to wade through all of them all day, but other than that I just leave 'em. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/9 "2003-01-11T00:39:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > \*\*Mail them to a hotmail account. Hotmail scans for visruses \*\* You’ve got to be kidding! 🙂 > [@](#): > > **Hotmail: A Spammer’s Paradise?** > If so many spam offers weren’t totally bogus, Hotmail users would be incredibly well-endowed, slim people with plenty of hair who make big money working at home when they aren’t having great sex provoked by free porn and herbal Viagra. Many users of the free e-mail service offered by Microsoft’s [MSN.com](http://MSN.com) say that within a day of creating a new Hotmail account the spam starts flowing in, almost as if spammers have sunk a tap directly into Hotmail’s user database and are slurping up a free-flowing torrent of e-mail addresses. And according to Steve Linford, of the anti-spam Spamhaus Project, that’s almost exactly what’s happening. Source: [http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57132,00.html](http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,57132,00.html) ---
**Author:** ![banks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@banks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/banks)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/10 "2003-01-11T01:13:33Z")
personally, I would recomend /dev/null ---
**Author:** ![xenothrope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/7ab992/32.png) [@xenothrope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenothrope)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/11 "2003-01-11T01:29:19Z")
if u have a email that u think is a virus copy the full header of the email go to [www.google.com](http://www.google.com) put a " paste the header and follow it with another " search. see what it shows if its a virus delete it, if its a fake, chuckle at it. -x out ---
**Author:** ![Bob55](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Bob55](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob55)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2003, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-can-you-send-emails-you-think-have-viruses-on-them/147466/12 "2003-01-11T03:54:39Z")
Duckster, great article, I completely agree. I have a Hotmail account that I’ve ONLY ever used for a MSN passport (required for Asheron’s Call, a video game), I never mail from it or enter it anywhere…yet everytime I actually check the mail there are 50+ spam emails, amazing.