Why didn’t my email get through?
You have been directed to this page because you tried to send email to someone whose mail is handled by the Tartarus mail system, which decided that your email might have been created by a virus.
Due to the range of viruses in circulation today, Tartarus marks as potential threats any email file attachment that could be run by a Windows computer, or any zip archive that contains such a file. A file that could be run by a Windows computer and which is not marked appropriately within the email (for instance, as it would be by a normal email program such as Outlook) is marked as a more serious threat. Whether a particular email is rejected or not depends on whether the recipient has chosen to have either of the above categories of potential viruses blocked.
Some Tartarus addresses also block messages containing an attachment
called DELETED0.TXT. These attachments are typically created by
anti-virus software, which removes the dangerous virus from the
message and sends the rest on its way. However, no virus we know of
ever attaches itself to an otherwise legitimate mail; they all create
their own messages, and so the disinfected messages contain no useful
content. We receive quite a lot of these messages, and they would
cause unwanted clutter if not blocked.
What should I do?
If you did indeed send the original email, and intended to include a Windows program (or Windows font file) as an attachment, then you probably don’t have a virus. You should contact the recipient to arrange another method of transferring the executable. (Executables within zipfiles are blocked due to a number of viruses which use this tactic to sneak past simpler virus scanning mechanisms.)
If you did indeed send the original email, and intended to include an
attachment called DELETED0.TXT, then you probably don’t have a
virus. If you give the attachment a different name, it should get
through. (Just converting it into lower case should be sufficient.)
If you sent the email but did not intend to include an attachment, then you almost certainly have a virus: you should consult whoever you consult when something goes wrong with your computer.
If you did not send the email, then either you have a virus, or a virus unrelated to you has used your email address to launch a virus attack against Tartarus. You should certainly check your system to ensure that you are not infected, but otherwise you do not need to take any further action.
Postmaster, Tartarus.Org