Over the past few weeks I have received emails telling me that my computer is sending viruses. I have a virus protector (although it may be outdated). Contacts of mine have told me my emails arrive without viruses. How can I block the emails from people who are telling me I have a virus? It appears my address book has been hacked into. The emails which say I am sending viruses are from people who I haven’t emailed for about 3 months. I use Outlook Express.

As the people who are saying you have a virus are from your address book, I am inclined to think that your computer is actually infected with a virus. The people who are telling you that your emails are fine, may not either, know how to identify a virus carrying email (viruses do disguise themselves quite well in many different file formats) or the virus only emailed itself once to everyone in your address book. Thus, each subsequent email you have sent does not have a virus payload. Therefore, to the people whom you email regularly, it seems like your emails are virus free but to people who have not received an email from you in several months, a virus payload would be easy to spot. I strongly suggest that you update your virus scanner with the latest virus definition files and do a full system scan of all files. I also suggest that you keep up to date with any security hole fixes released for Outlook Express. Even though it probably isn’t a good idea to block people who are telling you that you have a virus (as they are really doing you a favor), if you would like to block a particular type of email, or simply sort your email more effectively, you can use the Outlook Express rules function. You can find this in Outlook Express in the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Message Rules’ > ‘Mail…’. In here, you can set up specific rules on how to handle email. For example, if the subject of an email contains the word ‘friend’, move it to the folder ‘emails from friends’.