So anyway, this will not stop you getting a virus, but if you do, will stop it being passed on to everyone in your address book which is one of the main ways these types of virii spread.

Open you address book, and add a new contact.
For the name, add 4 zeros: 0000
For the email address, add this: --@--.--
(So it looks like a real email).
That's all the fields we're worried about, so just save that.
The idea of this is that if the virus is trying to send to all entries in your address book, this one we just added is the first one that it will find. The server will reject the illegal address, Outlook will halt, and the viral email will never get sent at all.

Vince

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Internet Business Solutions S.L.(Spain)

Let me also pass along another "protection" that I stumbled on. When I changed computers six months ago, I didn't copy my addresses into Outlook because I was relying more on a contact database (ACT). A couple months ago I got hit with the "nimba" virus. It apparently didn't go any further from here.

Recovering from that virus I noticed that all my MSOffice apps no longer worked, but everything else worked fine. It seems that many viruses target Microsoft products, probably because they are common and (without protection) vulnerable, and they are more tightly tied to the OS, -- and the undeveloped minds that make viruses like to attack the big evil Redmond monolith.

- john

"Here's a little trick you can use to stop the spread of pc viruses" - Not! The misguided email outlines an alleged trick to prevent mass-mailing email worms from sending from your computer. This seemingly easy tip involves adding the bogus contact "!0000" to the Windows Address Book. The premise is that when the virus tries to send itself out to everyone in the address book, the mail client will falter on the bogus address and the attempt to send will fail. Of course, this assumes the virus intends to do a "send all" from the mail client in the first place. Most of the modern day viruses prefer to randomly select individual addresses or supplement the addresses with those found cached on the system. In fact, most of the new viruses bypass the mail client altogether and use their own SMTP engine to send their viral email. In other words, the tip will only be effective in limited cases. What the tip can do effectively is lead to a false sense of security, and that can sometimes be worse than doing nothing at all.