a couple of techie questions

chickaroonee

Hi there, I hope some of you nice techie people can answer a couple of queries for me.

First of all, whenever I log on to my laptop it loads a Microsoft active sync thing, which I can cancel, but can't seem to stop it starting. Any suggestions?

Second thing, I've had two emails in the last week or so to my work email address, which I use on this laptop. They've both looked like mail delivery failure notices, and said the email I'd sent to an address I'd never heard of, had failed. One was downloaded to my junk email folder, and also said it had an exe file. I've not sent any of these messages, and never even heard of these email addresses that have supposedly returned the email to me. All my scans are uptodate and fine, got anti-spyware/virus etc and all fine.

Do you think this is anything to worry about? Thanks in advance

chickaroonee

I should add, no one I know has had any emails from me like the one I got back (or at least none that I know of).

wakandem

Delete the messages & ignore/delete any others. You say these come through a work e-mail. If anyone is running this for you then let them know ( it dept)
Active sync is normally for connecting to another device like a mobile phone, that syncs all your calender e-mails etc. Has antyone ever put a phone on to the pc?

chickaroonee

Thanks, no never connected a phone to this laptop, but that's what it seems to want to do. This active sync thing used to come on screen whenever I used windows media player, and just recently started when I log on.

Do you think the return emails I've been sent mean that my email has been used for junk emails? Or can you get junk emails that are made to look like that?

fwor

chickaroonee wrote: »

Do you think the return emails I've been sent mean that my email has been used for junk emails? Or can you get junk emails that are made to look like that?

It most likely means that someone with your work email address in their contacts list has their PC "owned" by a botnet. These use other people's email addresses in the "From" field so that non-deliveries don't come back to the infected PC's owner, as otherwise they would realise they had been infected. The .exe file refers to the payload that the botnet has used to try to propagate to other PCs.

superscaper

If you don't connect either a smartphone or pocket pc to your computer then you don't need activesync and can be uninstalled. As far as I know it doesn't come installed by default so someone must have installed it at some point. Is it a 2nd hand computer?

chickaroonee

fwor wrote: »

It most likely means that someone with your work email address in their contacts list has their PC "owned" by a botnet. These use other people's email addresses in the "From" field so that non-deliveries don't come back to the infected PC's owner, as otherwise they would realise they had been infected. The .exe file refers to the payload that the botnet has used to try to propagate to other PCs.

sorry do you mean that others may have a virus (or similar problem) not me? (I'm not very techie so apologies)

chickaroonee

superscaper wrote: »

If you don't connect either a smartphone or pocket pc to your computer then you don't need activesync and can be uninstalled. As far as I know it doesn't come installed by default so someone must have installed it at some point. Is it a 2nd hand computer?

I've had the laptop from new, I do use a 3g card though if that's important?

fwor

chickaroonee wrote: »

sorry do you mean that others may have a virus (or similar problem) not me? (I'm not very techie so apologies)

Yes, others, not you. They try to get the non-delivery to go anywhere other than the infected PC, and your work email address is as good as anywhere else to the virus.

chickaroonee

Thanks, I wondered if it was something like that. Thought it would be unlikely that I had a virus, but if I did you'd think it would be sent to my address book which it hasn't. Phew