Road Runner® and your cable company are dedicated to an ongoing effort to protect you, our Road Runner customers and the Road Runner network from spam, Email viruses, and other unwanted Emails. In an effort to control the spread of computer viruses, Road Runner rejects the transmission of infected Emails.

If you attempt to send an Email containing a virus, you will receive the following error message:

ERROR:550: Email message contained a virus

Viruses continue to become more and more sophisticated. Little or no action is required to pass along an infected file. Typically, customers are unaware that their computer is infected. Unfortunately, spammers will often take advantage of virus-infected computers for the purpose of sending spam. To help put an end to the spread of Email viruses, any attempt to send a message infected with a virus through one of our outbound residential SMTP servers will result in the message being rejected by our server. This policy has been designed as an additional measure to protect our Road Runner customers from spam and Email viruses.

Alternative Resources:

If you are unaware why your computer would have sent out an infected Email, there might be a virus or Trojan program running on your computer. It is possible for an infected or compromised computer to send out Email messages without your knowledge or consent. We recommend that you immediately install and maintain anti-virus software, and consider installing a firewall. Time Warner Cable offers Internet Security http://www.rr.com/security for free.

Recommended Steps to Help Clean Your Computer

In order to help you secure your home computer, Road Runner suggests that you do the following:

  • Scan your computer for existing Trojans, viruses and security vulnerabilities (we recommend:Time Warner Cable Internet Security)
  • Turn off all unnecessary services from your machine (Such as Windows Messaging)
  • Make sure that you are up to date on all relevant security patches for your machine's operating system (Microsoft's Windows Update Security Bulletins)
  • Turn off file and print sharing services on your machine
  • Always use anti-virus software, and make sure that your anti-virus definitions are up to date (http://www3.ca.com/virusinfo/)
  • Consider the use of a firewall
  • Be aware of where and when you enter passwords, logins and other sensitive information on the web. Do not give out personal information, logins or passwords unless you are aware of to whom you are giving them.