I received the following email today. Reading it, it seems reasonable, but is it true??

Matt

How to protect your e-mail address book  

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 'A'. For the screen name or email address,  type AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA Now, here's what you've done and why it works: The 'name 'A' 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. When it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA, it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered. 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 In Box almost immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA 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!

I wouldn't be caught dead using a local email program like Outlook or Thunderbird... why on earth would you want to download potentially virus-ridden emails into your hard rive before even reading them?

Stick to webmail... the attachments remain on the server, and you only download what you need... plus any download will be pre-scanned for viruses

Cloud computing FTW 

Cheers

GMAIL FTW

I mean come on, Outlook, Get real

Hotmail FTW

I didn't expect that rumor to be real, i mean what kind of a virus would just stop because it couldn't attack once

Why not save them as a notepad .doc Paul?

You don't need to leave your desk and you can't spill Fozzers amazing gravy (copyright worldwide) on your hard drive... or put it through the washing machine