Listers: Received the following message from Heinz today. It appears that somewhere a virus infected computer has picked up my e-mail address and is putting it on messages that are going to him. This is not an unheard of phenomenon, the guy who builds my computers has for years received at least one infected e-mail every day from the same e-mail address and he has so far been unable to stop it. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Heinz L. Zulauf" <7iron@gmx.de> To: "David Rorer" <drorer@fuse.net> Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:35 AM Subject: Virus Sending > Hi David, > > I have just blocked all mails from drorer@fuse.net, as I receive about > one message with a virus per day from this address. Sorry for that. > > Heinz > Ironically Heinz is not in my outlook express address book and, since these messages have been going to him, I have marked a noticeable drop off in spam messages in my in-box. The two phenomena are unrelated I am sure. Normally I read my messages in outlook express, set to view in preview pane and text only, no graphics. This means none of those pretty backgrounds, that some people like to use, show up. Nor do the flashing lights in these v***a ads. The situation had gotten so bad that I have been going to my ISP's website and previewing the e-mail list, deleting those messages that were obvious spam or had no subject. Sometimes there would be several hundred messages, with as many as half to two thirds spam! In fact I learned that the program would not delete more than about 20-25 messages at a time, without hanging! The frequency of spam messages began dropping off early this week and today there were no more than a half dozen obvious ones! Either the spammer has been shutdown or my ISP, which already did a pretty good job, has beefed up its spam filter considerably. In either case I'll take it! Any way one hopes that these fake e-mails only affect Heinz (sorry wish I could do something about it) and that it stops soon. In the meantime if it becomes necessary to communicate directly with Heinz I can always use my secret e-mail address (and no you may not have it. It is only for emergencies.) David Rorer