Hello All, This may explain some of the strange emails you are getting. The new Bugbear virus works in a similar way to Badtrans but is more devious in the way it propagates itself. It selects two email addresses in the infected computer from either the address book or from old emails stored in the computer. It forges the sender's address using one of these addresses and sends itself to the other. It uses the Blind Copy field instead of using the To address so it is not always obvious that it has been sent to you. When you receive a copy of the virus it has NOT been sent to you by the person it claims to be from. There is no point in accusing them, the infected computer is elsewhere. Listowners cannot discover which computers are infected so each individual must take their own precautions. Unsubscribing from mailing lists will not protect you, if your email address or a message sent by you is stored in any other computer then you are at risk. For more information see your Anti-Virus provider's website. If you don't have an AV program then you should not be using email. Here are the addresses of some websites with information: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.bugbear@mm.html http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/w32bugbeara.html http://www3.ca.com/virusinfo/Virus.asp?ID=13233 http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,562163,00.asp New variants of new viruses are often discovered as infections become more widespread. Updates to AV definitions will gradually be added and you should download the latest definitions every time you go on-line. If your computer is already infected you may not be able to access these websites as one of the effects of the virus is to block access to them. If this is the case get expert advice and do not use email again until your computer is guaranteed clean. As you could be the first victim of any new variant you should also take every other precaution you can. Bugbear has a worm element which can be executed just by viewing the infected email in the preview pane. Microsoft issued patches to prevent this years ago but many people have not installed them. As Bugbear exploits loopholes in Microsoft systems you must make sure that you have the latest updates installed which protect against such viruses starting up without you having opened the attachment. See: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ The current Bugbear attachments are about 70K in size. In Outlook Express you can add the Size field to the View which shows you details about your messages. The same should be true for other email programs. The most common subject lines for messages infected with the Bugbear virus are those that appear to be replies to mailing list messages but this is not exclusively so. Bugbear is usually taking a subject line from an email in the infected computer and supposedly replying to that but it also has a stock of ready-made subject lines which it might use. It only appears that it is mostly answering RootsWeb list messages because that is what most of us mainly have in our computers. It remains the case than you CANNOT receive a virus from a RootsWeb mailing list. RootsWeb do not allow attachments or HTML and there is a size limit for messages which is below the size of harmful viruses.These three factors all prevent viruses from getting through RootsWeb mailing lists, the same cannot be guaranteed for all mailing lists hosted by other organisations. To delete these Attachments and unwanted emails, just press the CAP LOCK key and the DELETE key at the same time, by deleting Virus attachments and unwanted messages this way, it deletes them from the computer system, where they are harmless. Regards Barbara Mallyon Basingstoke, Hants, UK BarbaraMallyon@lewmal.co.uk Listowner Remember, NEVER open attachments unless you know EXACTLY what they contain. Regards Barbara Mallyon Basingstoke, Hants, UK BarbaraMallyon@lewmal.co.uk Listowner ==== SUSSEX-PLUS Mailing List ==== The SUSSEX-PLUS mailing list covers the counties of Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire