Do you receive countless spam messages in your e-mail inbox? Are you worried that bad actors may have found your e-mail address despite your best efforts to keep it close friends and family only? One possibility is that you may be the victim of the MD e-mail forwarding virus. The "MD Virus" is not a computer virus in the traditional sense.
When a person sends a "chain" e-mail or a "forward" type e-mail, that e-mail not only contains a message, but also meta-data, which includes a list of all the e-mail addresses that e-mail was previously sent to. Somewhere along the chain, someone might try to send that e-mail to an address that no longer exists. When that happens, the e-mail comes back with the "Mailer-Daemon" message (hence "MD" Virus) indicating that the server is attempting to locate the correct e-mail. These servers, which are often housed in locations outside the US borders, will then have lists of e-mail addresses from these "forward" type e-mails.
Bad actors can then look for weaknesses in these servers, which may not be subject to all US law, and collect those e-mail addresses for exploitative spam e-mail lists. These spam e-mails can be used to gather personal data, financial data, or passwords. While you may not receive a "Mailer-Daemon" response, someone further down the e-mail chain might, and your e-mail along with those you forwarded it to, will be included the meta-data.
Conceived during the Reagan Administration, the Committee on Malicious Electronic Communication Against United States Citizens seeks to protect the public against e-mail threats. Through additional resources gained during the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, the committee was finally able to get up and running. Our goal is to combat malicious e-mail communications aimed at victimizing US citizens.
If you receive an e-mail forward that aims to "get a rise" out of you, be suspicious. Forwarded e-mails that are political in nature, display interesting facts, or feature animal pictures, are the ones most often used to perpetuate the MD Virus. The best course of action, to ensure that your e-mail address is not on a malicious list by foreign or domestic adversaries, is to 1) delete the e-mail; 2) stop sending "forwarded" type e-mails altogether; and 3) inform previous recipients/senders of that e-mail of the MD Virus.
By stopping the forwarding of the e-mail, we believe you are doing your patriotic duty in preventing our adversaries from harvesting the e-mail addresses of everyone who previously received the e-mail. We also believe you are protecting the information of yourself and loved ones. Finally, we believe that by stopping the forwards, you are also doing your part in cutting down opportunities of those who commit fraud.
Due to our funding restrictions, we are prevented from providing press releases and updates to any commercial media agencies (FOX News, MSNBC, OAN, CNN, etc.). As such, when we have data on high levels of MD Virus activity, we will release information to NPR radio affiliates. We schedule our releases for the morning and late afternoons. If you believe that you received a high amount of "spam" emails (more than 5 in a single day), listen to your local NPR radio affiliate (generally between 7:00am-9:00am and 5:00pm-9:00pm in your local time zone) for any updates. We will also update this page as needed.
MD Virus Updates
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Contents of this page are the conclusions of the Committee on Malicious Electronic Communication Against United States Citizens.
Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of representations made on this website. Due to funding restrictions, the website may not be updated regularly. This site does not intend to provide technical or legal advice. Individuals who visit this site have the freedom to decide the best course of action related to their particular circumstance. We do not make a suggestion related to deleting marketing e-mails or e-mails not part of a malicious act or scheme. Individual situations will differ and the law and practices may have changed since publication. Readers considering acting upon this information should consult with applicable professionals to understand their options.
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