By Leo Notenboom
I’m getting a lot of email bounces to messages that I’ve never sent. Does this mean my computer is infected with one of those “bots”?
No.
It’s extremely unlikely that the bounces are the result of a bot infection on your machine, or anything related to your computer at all for that matter.
However…
Depending on the bounces that you’re getting, it could mean that you have a different problem.
Or none at all.
How bots work
“Bots”, short for “software robots”, are programs that infect your machine and then are controlled remotely to perform various tasks that are at worst malicious and at least annoying.
“Even though it may be on your machine, most bots do not send email that looks like it came from you.”
The key thing to realize about bots is that they rarely know what machine they’re on, and they rarely, if ever, try to impersonate the identity of the machines own.
They’re just listening for and following instructions that they’re sent over the internet from someone who’s controlling a network
Article Continued Here: Really removing traces of data
This post is excerpted with Leo’s permission from his blog.
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