I can't testify as to the effectiveness of the following, because I use
Netscape as my mail reader.  It was forwarded to me and I thought it
might be of use to someone.

Larry A.

As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into
your computer it heads straight for your email address book
and sends itself to everyone in there,
thus infecting all your friends and associates.
This trick won't keep the virus from getting into
your computer, but it will stop it from using your
address book to spread further, and it will alert
you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do: first, open your address book
and click on "new contact" just as you would do if
you were adding a new friend to your list of email
addresses.  In the window where you would type
your friend's first name, type in !000
(that's an exclamation mark followed by 3 zeros).
In the window below where it prompts you to enter
the new email address, type in WormAlert.
Then complete everything by clicking add, enter,
ok, etc.

Now, here's what you've done and why it works: the
"name" !000 will be placed at the top of your address
book as entry #1.  This will be where the worm
will start in an effort to send itself to all your
friends.  But when it tries to send itself to !000,
it will be undeliverable because of the
phony email address you entered (WormAlert).  If the
first attempt fails (which it will because of the
phony address), the worm goes no further and your
friends will not be infected.

Here's the second great advantage of this method:
if an email cannot be delivered, you will be notified
of this in your InBox almost immediately.
Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that
an email addressed to WormAlert could not be delivered,
you know right away that you have the worm
virus in your system.  You can then take steps to
get rid of it!