Outlook virus not detected

[Akuj]

Hello, In Outlook 2013, when I press send, the message is erased and replaced with two Chinese characters. Undo does not bring the deleted body back. Sometimes, the message is sent and in the Sent folder I can see that only the two Chinese chars were in the body.

McAfee does not detect any virus during full scan.

My product is McAfee Total Protection v16.0 R29, also called v18.9 with date Nov 23, 2020.

My machine OS is Windows 10 Home Single Language, licensed and kept up to date.

Any tips would be much appreciated.

[Bharani_BD]

Hi @Akuj 

We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. To understand the issue better, we would like to have a look at the screenshot of the Chinese(junk) characters that appear on the outlook message window. So please help us with the screen shot of the issue to analyze and assist you further.

Thanks & Regards,
Bharanidharan S

[cyberdude]

@Bharani_BD 

hello,

have you seen the topic in the Antispam section already perhaps ?

there is another person that has the same issue and explaining what it sees.

perhaps this info can help you further for assistance ?............

link for the topic;

McAfee Support Community - Emails sent with characters instead of original co... - McAfee Support Co...

greetings

[Akuj]

That's interesting. It says your product is broken and there is no fix scheduled. Interesting. I can't afford to risk using Outlook with your broken product so I won't be following that (rather weird) guidance.

What I need to know is the name of the virus, how it got there (I am not stupid in opening suspicious mails or attachments and I did think McAfee was properly scanning all incoming), and what steps to take to get it out of Outlook.

The workaround of shutting down my expensive anti-virus is not acceptable.

[Peacekeeper]

@Bharani_BD 

As you have users asking about refunds and virus names this thread needs mod assistance or maybe a malware expert

[MikeMastelero]

Is it possible for me to get a refund as this product no longer provides what it promises?  I'm having the same problem.  I went and did my report via Outlook and when I sent it, it was replaced by 2 Chinese characters.  I was really disappointed as it was a long report and it was unrecoverable.

[Akuj]

Thanks for your interest. I am not going to risk opening Outlook any more. Are you trying to tell me that there are so many message-erasing-Chinese-replacing viruses that McAfee can't handle that you need to know which?

[Bharani_BD]

Hi All

We are sorry for the delayed response Please uncheck the option "add my signature to indicate emails are safe" under Settings >> Anti Spam >> Outgoing email scan and let us know if the issue still persists.

Thanks & Regards
Bharanidharan S

[Akuj]

As I mentioned before, until somebody tells me the name of the virus and how to remove it, I will not experiment or participate in any of McAfee's research efforts. I am a customer, not a lab. I cannot risk further trouble.

These suggestions are looking a lot like the nonsense from Microsoft where they tell you to hold the left alt and shift key while rebooting or some such uniformed craziness. Clearly, you are just guessing. I appreciate that you take the time to guess, but it's not useful to me.

I'm paying for a service which McAfee claims to provide. They don't. Better that they say they don't protect Outlook before I bought the package.

[Dennis_R]

I'm having the same problem. McAfee suddenly started adding the logo at the end of my emails on Dec 1 (even though I've had that option turned off for years). Starting the next day, then randomly, 3 times since then, I get emails sent with no text but, instead, there are 2 Chinese-looking characters. Each time they've gone to a new person. The characters change each time. Here is the one from the first such email: 

鷀鋛ǎ

Here's the one from the third email (I already deleted the 2nd email): 

䀐頕Ǯ

Forth email:

᭐૝Ǹ

After that, I disabled the option to add the McAfee logo to my outgoing emails, then on top of that I logged in to Outlook as an administrator and disabled the McAfee add-in altogether. Since then, so far I have not had any problems.

That said, while Googling this issue on the Web I've found numerous reports of this same thing, in connection with McAfee, that have gone of for years. Many of these reports are listed on this website as well. (See link at the end of this message.) So, I would think that McAfee must have been aware of this issue and has apparently chosen to ignore it and hope it goes away. But it is not going away. By not declaring a company emergency alert and getting all your top people working on this, you are undermining your own reputation as a virus fighter when you can't even keep viruses (or bugs that look like viruses) out of your own code.

It is like the massive SolarWind hack all over again. That one looks like Russian. But this one looks like a Chinese virus-enabled hack. And it makes me think that everything on my computer is being copied and saved to servers in China, thanks to McAfee's lackadaisical response to this issue. Please escalate and fix this scary issue ASAP and tell all your customers about the fix once you have it.

Here's a link to similar reports to McAfee on this same issue (found by using this search phrase on Google: "outlook chinese characters site:mcafee.com"): https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&ei=mXXgX_DpJc7j-gTZvKKIBA&q=outlook+chinese+characters+sit...

Thank you,
Dennis R.