Most such viruses will stop once they have gone through one propagation cycle. Some will have another primary payload (maybe a bot) and won't want to draw further attention to their presence by repeating the propagation cycle as the first will have probably caught most of the vulnerable recipients. The virus is probably still lurking malevolent doing or waiting to do it what ever silly or evil task it is programmed to do _____ From: GP-UK [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Clegg Sent: 23 April 2009 17:17 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Techie - not medical - returned mail which I did not send Maybe whoever it was updated their virus checker - or went on holiday or something! 2009/4/23 Mary Hawking <[log in to unmask]> Thanks, Ewan For some peculiar reason it seems to have stopped again - but I'll take you up if the problem recurs! Mary In message <8E421CF51A5440188D2E614154005B8F@Randan>, Ewan Davis <[log in to unmask]> writes Mary Hawking wrote: I seem to be having a number of this type of message for undeliverable mail, and someone seems to be using my email address. Can anyone advise what - if anything - I need to do? Have I become a bot? TIA MaryH Somebody with you in their address book has become infected by a virus which is trying to reproduce by sending emails from the infected machine which appear to be from you. The logic is that if you are in the address book then you are likely to be known by others that are also in that address book who are then more likely to trusted the infect email than if it appeared to come from a stranger. The infected machine is probably cycling through all of the addresses using each one in turn as a "spoofed" sender to all the others. This is probably not a result of you machine being infected and you are probably not a bot as I am sure you have up to date anti-malware running on your machine. There is little you can do about this although it might be possible to identify the real sender from the email headers and alert them to the fact they have a problem, you can send me some examples and I can have a look if you like. Ewan Davis - Director - Woodcote Consulting See our website at www.woodcote-consulting.com [log in to unmask] Voice +44(0)8456 170100 Mobile +44(0) 7774 272724 Treasurer British Computer Society - Health Informatics Forum Member of British Computer Society Primary Health Care Specialist Group Visit... www.phcsg.org for membership details -- Mary Hawking