Friends, I wish to humbly and abjectly apologize to any of you who were caused problems by my recent transmission of the Badtrans virus to everyone in my address book. I didn't know I had it until my email began to bounce off the various server's firewalls and return to me. I have never had a virus before and it took a little while to realize what was going on. The virus infected 3 of my windows files and my Norton 2001 could not repair, quarantine, or delete the 3 infected files. I took the computer to Best Buy's repair shop and their scan showed no infected files so I took it back home and turned it on again. I immediately knew that a new batch of virus was being transmitted and deleted my address book and all my sent mail with addresses. Too late, the virus had loaded my address book into the infected windows file and when I opened Outlook Express it began to send it's hateful attachments again. In short, I took it to the shop 3 times before it was erased from my computer. The computer tech said that the virus used my computer's clock to delay sending the virus for a day or two after I received it from the person for which I had done a lookup for. I would not have minded if it only caused my computer damage but it, through my neglect, has caused many of my friends and others grief also. I can not begin to tell you how awful and humiliated I feel for being a part of passing this virus on and I intend that I shall never be a part again. I must gratefully say that I received only kindness and sympathy from everyone who contacted me except for one person who sent me some unkind and hurtful email. To him I especially apologize for causing him to react with such anger. I have lost all my address book and have no desire to have it again, so I will keep addresses only in hardcopy. If anyone desires that I have their address then please send it to me in private and I will keep it as a hardcopy. I won't keep addresses for folks that I do lookups for anymore. I would never send an attachment without an explanation of it's contents. Again, I ask your understanding and I hope that none of us will be victims of these senseless viruses anymore. Thanks; Willie in California