email problem - virus?

[Bobbler]

This problem has been in the back of my head for a while but today I
sent an email from entourage to my wife at work. After she received it
her email system sent mails from her to other people without her
sending them.
I sent an email two weeks ago that was stopped by a companies scanner.
I also get emails saying that an email I have sent could not be sent to
someone - again someone who I have never sent an email to in my life.
I am using a G5 imac running 10.4.5 and up to date office.
How can I check that I am not carrying some sort of virus?
I have Virusbarrier X installed and it has found nothing.

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

This problem has been in the back of my head for a while but today I
sent an email from entourage to my wife at work. After she received it
her email system sent mails from her to other people without her
sending them.
I sent an email two weeks ago that was stopped by a companies scanner.
I also get emails saying that an email I have sent could not be sent to
someone - again someone who I have never sent an email to in my life.
I am using a G5 imac running 10.4.5 and up to date office.
How can I check that I am not carrying some sort of virus?
I have Virusbarrier X installed and it has found nothing.

Well, apart from the very recent scare stories about a Trojan horse written
for mac (although you would have to be extremely dense/naive to download the
Trojan, install it, type in your admin password, and then run the programme)
there are no viruses that can infect the mac and cause the behaviour you
describe.

It is still, however, possible to forward a file infected with a windows
virus, if you received one from outside. Not all mac anti-virus programmes
detect all windows virii. I can't comment on how well VirusBarrier does.

 

[Bobbler]

Thanks Barry,
No I have not downloaded a trojan as far as I know, naive/dence as I
am.

What do you suggest I use to find the problem?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Re

her email system sent mails from her to other people without her
sending them. and
I also get emails saying that an email I have sent could not be sent to
someone - again someone who I have never sent an email to in my life.

This is usually due to a practice known as spoofing--a virus on someone
else's computer grabs your address from their address book and makes it look
like the message came from you.

There is not really anything you can do to prevent this.

More information at these links--just google something like "email spoofing"
if you want more--I randomly picked a few that looked helpful.

http://www.helpdesk.bham.ac.uk/faq/viruses_spoofing.htm

http://www.lse.ac.uk/itservices/help/spamming&spoofing.htm
http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Email-Spoofing.html

Not sure whether your address being spoofed could account for the other
things you mention. The timing of your wife's problem might have just been a
coincidence, or you could have forwarded her something that did not affect
you.

 

[Bobbler]

Thanks.
My wife has told her administrators about the problem and they do not
seem too concerned. I have probably spent too much time worrying about
this now. My mac and the ibook on our home network all appear to be OK
so I will just have to see if anything else "odd" happens.