Hi Everyone, I have noticed via the list administrtors mail list that the Happy 99 virus is working it's way through the internet emails once again. This message is not a virus warning, this message is just to let you know how hard Rootsweb.com is working to keep our mail lists virus free. You will not get a virus via a rootsweb mail list. Having said that, I must also tell you that there were several lists that had slipped through the unnoticed and had not been protected. Our list was NOT one of those. Here is a message from Tim Pierce of Rootsweb. This message is to reasure you that your Rootsweb mail lists are safe. Just becareful of any attachments to any emails you receive from friend or foe. Tim's message: By saying that the filters for "your list and a few others" were out of date, I mean "as opposed to the other 17,000 lists that we host," which are all up-to-date. The code which strips out attachments and HTML was simply not installed on Richard's list. Attachment blocks have been in place since 1998, and we have had a rule that specifically eliminates Happy99 since early last year. Forwarded messages are not generally treated as attachments. If the forwarded message includes some kind of "non-text" attachment, e.g. a GIF or WAV file, it should be rejected. The basic rule for our attachment filters is that any message of one of these types: * "image" * "audio" * "video" * "application" * "text/html" * "text/enriched" ... is not permitted on a RootsWeb mailing list. This rule applies even for messages that are included as part of someone else's forwarded message. The goal is to keep out attachments that are anything but plain old boring text; if someone forwards a message that only consists of text, it should be accepted, and if they "attach" a file that just happens to be an ordinary text file, that should also be accepted. Anything fancier should get rejected. This ensures that large attachments which may require proprietary software to view are kept off the lists, and it also guarantees that viruses or trojan horses which require executable content cannot be sent to these lists. I do not know of any virus or worm which can be transmitted in a message without embedding it in one of these message types. -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer