Arabic-L:GEN:Fake message warning

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 02 May 2003
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Fake message warning

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1)
Date: 02 May 2003
From:moderator
Subject:Fake message warning

Some of you, possibly all of you, have received a message that looks
very much like an Arabic-L message.  It has my name, Dilworth
Parkinson, as the sender, but if you look closely you'll find that it
has my return address as Dilworth_Parkinson at arizona.edu which is an
entirely fictitious address.  This message contained an attachment, and
I have a policy never to include attachments on Arabic-L for this very
reason, and I have heard from some of you that it also contained a
virus.  My technical people here tell me that someone has basically
hijacked my address, fiddled with it, and used it to try to reach a lot
of people with a virus.
So, if you receive an Arabic-L message, or what looks like one, that
contains an attachment, do not open it.  I will continue my policy not
to post attachments on Arabic-L, so the presence of an attachment is a
sign that the message is fake.
Also, given the continued vicious onslots of the virus hackers, I
strongly suggest that all of you protect yourselves with a good virus
protection program that scans everything that comes into your computer
and isolates problems before they can do damage.
Sorry for these problems.  I am talking to the tech people here about
ways to protect from such misuse of my name and Arabic-L in general,
and they have made some suggestions but also say that the current way
the internet is organized means that it is impossible to prevent such
attacks entirely.
Dil

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End of Arabic-L:  02 May 2003