SirCam virus can indirectly affect Mac users

The MacFixIt emailbag is getting hammered by the SirCam virus (see previous coverage of this virus).

The Mac is basically safe from the virus. It does not infect the Mac platform nor can it spread from a Mac by generating email from a user's address book (as it does on Windows machines; see SARC info). However, you can still inadvertently forward the infected email to a PC user, and thereby infect the recipient.

The main problem for Mac owners, as we have now discovered, occurs if your email address is in the address book of others who are infected. If this happens, you may receive a virus-infected email. Not a big problem by itself. But, if your name is in enough address books, you can get several dozen of these emails each day. This is what has happened to us. At one point earlier this week, we were getting about ten of these emails every hour! In several cases, we were getting multiple emails from the same person. They all contained the text: "Hi! How are you. I send you this file in order to have your advice. See you later. Thanks." Plus they had an attachment.

Several other MacFixIt readers have reported this same SirCam flooding.

So far, we know of no way to turn off this faucet at our end (other than using rules/actions that filter it as spam; which at least cuts down on the annoyance factor). You can also avoid downloading the long attachments by setting your email client to not download files larger than a fixed length that you assign. We only hope the virus runs its course soon.

Update: This page has a filter for EIMS users. (Thanks, Erik Van-der-Mey.)