An email received from a regular sender from a government department was delivered to the Junk folder, and had [Virus Error] prefixed to the Subject. Does anyone know what would cause this, and whether it's a real indication that the email was carrying a virus?
iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3), iMac early 2008
That generally means that an anti-virus scanner on the mail server determined that the message contained something malicious. In such cases, the mail server will add text like that to the beginning of the subject. It may strip out whatever was identified as malicious, or may simply alert you so that you can make the final determination for yourself. This may have been your mail server trying to protect you, or it may be that he forwarded or replied to a message that his e-mail server had flagged.
In any event, whatever malware might have been attached to that message, if it even made it to your Mac in the first place, would almost certainly have been Windows malware, and thus unable to infect your computer. If it were Mac malware, it still couldn't affect you unless you opened an attachment, and at this time there is no known Mac malware capable of infecting a Yosemite system. So it's highly unlikely you have anything to worry about.
That generally means that an anti-virus scanner on the mail server determined that the message contained something malicious. In such cases, the mail server will add text like that to the beginning of the subject. It may strip out whatever was identified as malicious, or may simply alert you so that you can make the final determination for yourself. This may have been your mail server trying to protect you, or it may be that he forwarded or replied to a message that his e-mail server had flagged.
In any event, whatever malware might have been attached to that message, if it even made it to your Mac in the first place, would almost certainly have been Windows malware, and thus unable to infect your computer. If it were Mac malware, it still couldn't affect you unless you opened an attachment, and at this time there is no known Mac malware capable of infecting a Yosemite system. So it's highly unlikely you have anything to worry about.
I also received an email this morning that landed in my Junk Mail folder that contained [Virus Error] in the Subject line. I believe that [Virus Error] was prepended to the subject line either by the iCloud server or less likely (but possible) by one of the OS X or iOS devices that check my iCloud account for email.
Got the same thing, but then for a customer with an @me account. We sent out daily newsletters to 70k people. Could someone give any clarification on how to avoid this?
I have this as well from Amazon.com. They've been sending me emails for many many years and they never had a virus or have been classified as spam. Today, for the first time, they sent me any email , and iCloud added
[Virus Error] to the subject. Why?
I cloud doens't scan for virus'. Who is the sender in the header, is it actually amazon or did someone simply fake it.
In my case the sender was my wife, sending from her normal email address in a government department, to my normal email address at me.com. It was definitely a legitimate email.
It's a legitimate email from Amazion confirming an order I made. I ordered more items yesterday , and the confirmation emails arrived without the 'virus' part in the subject. I wonder if Apple is experimenting with new features or there was a glitch in their system?
I just had the same. It was a regular payment confirmation from Paypal, from a legit Paypal address.
I experienced the same issue today too: [Virus Error] prepended to subject line. It was just on one email I received. This also happened on a previous occasion also to just one email. The date of that email was 5-8-2015. If you search for [virus error] with spotlight, you will find any additional emails that have this tag. I followed up on the one from May with Apple and although I don't remember exactly what they said, I do remember that it wasn't anything to worry about. And, when I say I followed up with Apple, I mean I talked to a senior advisor who did spend some time looking in to it so I'm not concerned about seeing it again today. Every once in a while some weird happens with my iCloud mail, e.g., a few days ago an email popped up as new that I had read and replied to in March 2015. I saw it come through via notifications and then spent 30 minutes looking for it. It wasn't anywhere to be found. I eventually figured out that it wasn't new. Pam
This gets better.
Note how the subject in the message list says "[Virus Error]" yet the email message subject in the viewer shows no such thing. It looks an awful lot like Mail is putting that in there and not actually changing the subject
mail went to Junk folder with [Virus Error] prefixed to Subject line. Why?
