[Virus Error] inserted in front of the email subject

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Level 1

32 points

[Virus Error] inserted in front of the email subject

For the second time today, I have received a series of emails from someone which has the following text: [Virus Error] inserted in front of the original email subject. The emails were received on both my iPhone 7 and iPad Air 2.

Both times the emails were forwarded from my university account to my iCloud account because they are on a list of critical contacts in Outlook. There was no indication of a virus infection after the emails arrived in my university account. One of the contacts was internal and the other external to the university. I have received other emails to my iCloud account from both internal (forwarded) and external accounts that did not have this text inserted.

Does anyone know if this indicates a legitimate concern?

Thanks.

iPhone 7, iOS 13

Posted on Jan 21, 2020 10:17 AM

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Answer 1

vasska

Level 1

32 points

Jan 21, 2020 5:49 PM in response to DWJ123

for anyone curious, this is definitely an apple/icloud issue, and not an issue with your university or company or whatever.

i am experiencing the exact same issue: emails i receive at my company are auto-forwarded to my icloud account by a rule when they meet certain criteria. my company is safe, to a fault, so i know that there is no malware present when the emails are forwarded (and our antivirus catches all suspected malicious content BEFORE it gets to my inbox, i.e. before it gets the chance to forward any messages).

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Answer 2

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,382 points

Jan 21, 2020 10:27 AM in response to DWJ123

A lot of mail servers try much too hard to "clean" emails from what they think may be attached malware. If they do, some are set up to append the subject with text like that so you know someone (supposedly) tried to pass on malware to you as an attachment.

Problem is, some try MUCH too hard to be your savior. I do photo retouching mostly for businesses, but also some for the general public. I often can't sent an attached .jpg back to the customer because their ISP's mail server will kill it as possible malware and the email never reaches the recipient. Or it does, but the server has stripped the attachment. Then I have to jump through various other hoops to get their completed image to them.

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Answer 3

DWJ123 Author

Level 1

32 points

Jan 21, 2020 12:59 PM in response to Kurt Lang

Thanks for the feedback. Another interesting thing I noticed since my first post is that I have received forwarded emails from internal university contacts where some are flagged and others are not. If what you suggested is actually happening, it would have to be due to some changes that were recently made to the university servers. I have been using iOS devices here for many years and this is the first time I have seen anything like this. Thanks again.

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Answer 4

DWJ123 Author

Level 1

32 points

Jan 21, 2020 1:29 PM in response to Kurt Lang

I discussed this with my IT staff and they said there is no way for them to know if changes were made to the server settings because it's all handled by Microsoft now. That in itself is a fairly recent change because security had been handled at the "College" level and now it's all lumped together at the "University" level... which means Microsoft.

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Answer 5

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,382 points

Jan 21, 2020 1:22 PM in response to DWJ123

You're welcome. 🙂

Universities seem to be particularly guilty of this type of thing. Have a Mac? They don't care. You either have a completely useless anti virus app installed (and proof it's there), or they won't let you connect to the campus network.

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[Virus Error] inserted in front of the email subject

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