Quite a few people make a habit of forwarding "cute" email to all their friends. Every email address that appears in the "To," "From," or "CC" box on an email, at any of the "forwards," can be easily read by anyone who happens upon it. By the time one of these has been forwarded a few times, including the original message and all the intermediate "forwards," I've seen single emails containing close to 100 easily "harvested" email addresses.

If any ONE person in that bunch is infected with a SPAM distributing infection, nearly everyone in the list likely will begin receiving SPAM email. With a good filter at your ISP (internet service provider), and/or with a filter on your own computer, most of the obvious SPAM addressed to you is likely to be "bounced," so seeing that something isn't getting to you is usually a "good thing" - so far as the health of your computer is concerned.

If this might be what happened to you, your problem isn't likely to be anything on your computer. Your problem is having "friends" who are IDIOTS. (Or maybe - to give them the fullest of benefit for any doubt - just ignorant of common email courtesy.)

If you MUST SEND an email to more than one recipient, you send it to yourself, with ALL other intended recipients as "BCC" (Blind Carbon Copy) so that their address appears ONLY ON THE COPY THEY RECEIVE, and NOBODY gets the email addresses of anyone else you send it to.

If you think you have a friend who's guilty but might be at least as trainable as the average chicken, you may want to inform them that they've done a no-no. If they persist, just block their address and get a new friend.

John