I get anywhere from 50 to 100 of these emails every day. You probably get far less. They say something like, "The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment" or "The original message has been included as an attachment", or "See Attachment". Whatever you do, DO NOT OPEN the attachment. The best thing that you can do with these emails is delete them immediately.
These emails are the result of someone else opening these very same attachments. When you open one, it may not seem like anything happens, but the attached file is a virus (more specifically known as a worm) and starts sending out emails to other people with the same attachment. This virus looks in your mailbox or in other parts of your computer for email addresses and sends emails to and from them. It also usually attaches itself to your computer so that whenever you are online, it will send out emails.
In most cases the From address on the email that you received is not where the email came from. Instead it is an email address found on the infected computer along with yours. So don't hit Reply on these virus emails and send an email back telling this person that his computer is infected, because that person is probably innocent and does not have any problems with viruses.
What can you do then? About the only thing that you can do short of getting a new email address is wait. There is no way for you to find out who has the infected computer, but hopefully, the person with the infected computer will realize that he has a virus and will clean his computer with an anti-virus program. When he does, the emails will stop coming.
Ray Geide
Author of Ray's Computer Tips and many top computer software
Super Win Software, Inc.
http://www.superwin.com
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