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This is worrying me, any ideas??

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15 replies

by thamer 2 views

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Don't know if you'll have a clue on what's happening, let alone how to solve it:

I got a strange email yesterday morning,
totally blank "From" & "Subject" boxes, no attachments or anything odd. Deleted it, then emptied outlook's deleted folder, then something odd happened:

A file appeared on my desktop, simply called "~"

No extension, nothing. Opened it with Notepad and it looked like code (alot of strange squares & things) and text. The text seems to be a dump of my address book.

I immediately blocked all net access (nothing had attempted to connect tho, firewalled you see), and did a complete system scan with Norton Pro. It found nothing. Did a complete system check with Spybot, checkin for spyware, keyloggers, and all that crap, still totally clean !!!

I tried putting exe, html, & com extensions on it, scanning it every time, & was always clean! It wouldn't run either, when it had exe or com, and displayed nothing but junk when I HTML's it.

VERY STRANGE!!

Thing is, this file keeps appearing almost every time I send an email, which is the worrying part.

Any ideas from you clever bunch of peoples ???

15 replies

by cg it

send it to McAfee or Symantec is you think it's a Virus, Trojan or worm program that hasn't been seen before and doesn't register on their scanners.

You can get an online scan from either of them.

by thamer

As I've the latest DAT files ... the idea that I could be among the first group of careless people who have been infected by a yet-another-unknown-virus ... doesn't look good in my mployment file... Thanks for the advise though. Doesn't help much.

by james goerke

My first idea is that outlook had a corrupt e-mail which it didnt know how to handle so it created some sort output file. Why its continueing I suspect is that the corrupt e-mail corrupted some file that outlook uses for send/receive and thats why your getting a outpout file every time. Why its being put on your desktop, I have no idea... The virus thing the other person suggested might be a possibility, but as you said, highly unlikely. What I would suggest is do a complete un-install of Outlook and then re-install it. Getting rid of any temp files, including Internet Temp files, before re-installing is a good idea to make sure that you dont pick up any settings from the last installation. Hope this helps.

James

by thamer

I did not eliminate the posibility of a virus ... and your "idea" of a corrupted e-mail which made OL to create an output file in my desktop ... is ... unique... Thanks for sharing your thoughts .... appreciated.

by otl

Definitely sounds like a virus, received one targeting Outlook while using Netscape, could look at the code but it would not run as Outlook was not installed. Could have been a partially corrupted virus that the send portion of it was the corruptedportion. Which would be the reason it failed, creating the file/icon on the desktop in preparation for transmission may have been part of the virus to get you to send it out twice.

by thamer

This the reply I got from Symantec:

Dear ,

We have analyzed your submission. The following is a report of our findings for each file you have submitted:

filename: D:\~
machine: XXXXXX-T1V71I3
result: See the developer notes

Developer notes:
D:\~ does not appear to contain malicious code.

by thamer

Response to OTL...

Okay! your idea sounds ... resonable knowing how nasty and smart a virus can be ... I'll hold your analysis as valid at the moment and see if other experts have something to add.

by thamer

latest on regards to the file on my desktop ...

It hadn't appeared in the last 36hours, until just now ... Considering the pc's online 24/7, and I've sent about 20 email during this time.

It's not "just when I send attachment" or "only when I send to new person"... just seems randomly appearing.

The contents are about the same, just junk & addresses.

by turambar386

How odd.. my father called me just yesterday to ask me about all these tilde (that's what the ~ is called) files being created on his desktop...

It definately sounds like a virus, but one that neither Symantec nor McAfee know about. Or, possibly, it is caused by a spyware program since neither of those anti-virus apps will tell you if you are infected with spyware.

I'll look into it some more and let you know if I find anything.

by turambar386

Update: A search for "tilde desktop" at groups.google.com shows that this is apparently a known problem with a recent update for OE.

Presumably the folks at microsoft will get around to fixing their fix sometime.

Meanwhile, you can always switch to MozillaMail ;-)

by thamer

Thanks turambar ... for your response. I searched for "tilde desktop" in google's groups and my search turned back ... nothing.

Can you provide me with the URL name of the topic or where MSN says it is an OE problem that they are working on. Thanks in advance.

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