Need some computer help.

I like to chat on a forum at Southestern Ohio Preps (SEOP). It's mostly all about sports with little general discussion. Resently a lot of people in the forum has been getting e-mail viruses sent to them. One being from a Mattash and the other from a Joho. They are all coming from 4 different website locations, each one having to do with sport forums or so the sending e-mail says. Anyone know what could be causing this? One of the mods are named Mattash he is the owner of SEOP, and one has an e-mail with joho in it. I know neither would send a virus on purpose and we are all trying to figure out how to stop it. I been talking to Mattash and he says he doesn't have anybody in his address book. I thought maybe that would rule out a mass e-mailing worm because he doesn't have anyone in his address book. Could the site be getting hacked? How would one know if that is so? Thanks in advance!

The address book isn't the only place mass mailer worms get their sources from. Some new worms search your hard drive and look for any text that looks like it could be an email address (typically, anything with an @) and use that for its fodder. Most worms these days will also search not only the address book, but the from, to, cc, bcc and reply-to fields of every email it finds.

Someone, probably somebody who is (was) on the list, was hit by a virus, and the virus took names out of THEIR address book / web cache, and is now sending out copies of itself using fake return addresses.

In other words, someone out there whom you have no way of tracking down, is infected with the virus, and it won't stop until they get their machine cleaned up.

I have used the free version of ZoneAlarm for years and it works very well.

I also use Grisoft AVG, which is also a free download. It updates automatically on a schedule I can set.

To get rid of the worms or viruses, you can usually get instructions at an antivirus site such as Symantec

If you know the name of the virus, you can do a Google Search to find out about it and how to get rid of it.

The use of the Opera browser instead of IE also helps prevent the acquisition of viruses and worms.


On Edit: added links to each of the programs

As far as I know, no body on that site has my email addy. Which makes me think some one is hacking into the site and stealing e-mails. This all started last Thursday after some one posted a political discussion. Just looks fishy I guess. Oh well, if there is nothing we can do then that's that. I use Mcafe virus scan and firewall plus adaware. May web server is finding the virus before mcafe does. It will not let me see an e-mail with a virus. So that's a good thing.