Good morning, The following e-mail was received from the Mailing List Administrators as concerns about a virus that is doing the rounds. This is GENUINE. John, List Administer. ************* Part 1. The virus is called w95.hybris.gen. If you go to http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w95.hybris.gen.html you will find a technical description of it. Basically it says that once someone is infected, every time they send out an email, a second email will be sent out to the same person with an attachment that contains the virus. So it means that if the virus is sent to someone, they should also be find the sender as one of other emails they have received earlier, although from experience I have some doubts. Part 2. The only attachments that Rootsweb will forward to list subscribers are text-only attachment. The hybris virus has either a .exe or .scr extension and will not be passed on to subscribers, however list admins are still susceptible and should have full virus protection. List admins should be aware that while their lists are fully protected, the admins are not. I have received the virus two and a half times (fotunately picked up by Norton anti-virus software). In two of the cases, I am still not able to identify which of the previous senders was infected, even though I replied to the likely ones, and asked them to send an email to me. In the half case, only part of the virus was sent to me was via a Rootsweb bounce, and it bounced because it was over 20k. Had it not been for the 20k post size limit, it would have tried to infect me. Part 3. Tell every subscriber to get their own virus protection (not only for themselves, but to help protect those they are sending private emails to). Any person that is active on the internet and doesn't have anti-virus protection is an idiot (and you may quote me). The worst story I heard (and it is true) is where a person in a business wrote to all his customers advising them that his email had a virus. Fortunately he had not attached a document as it was a document virus. Assure the list that Rootsweb does not send any not-text attachments to the subscribers. If need be, I am sure that Rootsweb will provide an 'official' statement to that effect. Please remember that this only applies to subscribers and not list admins, but the subscribers do not need to know that. If the main antagonist is "Mrs Noelle Oke <[email protected]>" she has posted to a couple of lists, and deserves a VERY STRONG reply from those list admins. In summary Post to your list; 1. Assuring them that the viruses are not coming through Rootsweb as that text-only attachments are the only attachments that may be sent out and this excludes ALL viruses, (the text only attachment bit may confuse them, so if you want to tell a really itsy-bitsy small white lie, tell them that no attachments are sent via the list, and so they will NEVER get a virus through their mail lists), 2. Assure them that if any subscriber has received the Snow White virus, they would have received it from other personal mail (point them to the Norton antivirus site above), 3. Thump their heads and tell them that their only real protection is buy a commercial anti-virus program (buggared if I know why they haven't got one already, as lists are the safest part of the internet) 4. Ask anyone on the list, if they think that they caught the virus from the list, to send you directly (not via the list) evidence of why they think it came from the list. 5. Ban any further discussion of it on your list at risk of unsubscription. Private email will be entered into. Phew! Glad I got all that of my chest. Maybe I am getting grumpy in my old age. This post ended up 10 times larger than what I originally intended. Now I'm the mood, I might write to "Mrs Noelle Oke <[email protected]>" even if she didn't post to my list. Cheers Peter Lakeman List admin for AUS-VIC-NE