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How does SPAM and Virus email find me?

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In many cases viruses include the ability to send email in an attempt to spread themselves to other computers across the internet. These days SPAM is often spread in a similar way by using host computers to send their SPAM messages from in much the same way that Viruses work.

When they do this they will search the infected computer that they are on for all email addresses that they can find and then try sending a message to every email address found and other email addresses that they guess might be valid based on a variety of rules.

In many cases when you receive an email message (SPAM or VIRUS) you will not see your name on the recipient lines because you were BCC’d (blind carbon copied). This is a common thing for SPAM and Virus email to do so that they can send the message to a lot of people without everyone seeing a list of all the recipients.

In many cases virus email that spreads in this way is able to be blocked for COCC thanks to our email firewall, however new virus outbreaks and many SPAM messages are not as easily blocked due to the difficulty of reliably identifying them as SPAM.
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