Attention all subscribers, There is NO SUCH THING as a virus being distributed by our HILL list. Please read below recent comments by Tim Pierce, administrator of all lists from Rootsweb.com, who has investigated recent similar claims. The HILL list is filtered and no attachments are allowed. Some recent viruses send themselves out to the addresses in your address book using an address it found there as the sender's address. So if you have the address of a list in your address book, the virus may use that to make it appear it came from the list. It does not actually come through RootsWeb, it only looks like it did. Below is what Tim Pierce recently had to say about possibly this or other similar viruses. Byron Hill HILL Listowner - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Hi, folks - We've had a lot of reports tonight about a virus being passed around on RootsWeb lists. I have looked into these reports and it does NOT appear that the viruses have actually been sent through our lists. I've included a semi-technical explanation of what I have been able to find out, for those of you who are curious. The only important message here is that RootsWeb's lists are NOT the source of recent virus reports. What seems to be happening is that the current flock of viruses do the following things when they infect a new computer: * The virus sends a copy of itself to everyone in the computer's address book; * It forges its own return address to look like it was sent by someone *else* in the address book; * and it uses the Subject line from a message that was recently sent from that machine. So if an infected person sent mail to BUMBLEROTTER-L@rootsweb.com, the virus might send out mail like this to someone else in the victim's address book: From: BUMBLEROTTER-L@rootsweb.com To: joe@example.com Subject: [BUMBLEROTTER] looking for Fred and Wilma Bumblerotter http://stuart.messagemates.com/index.html Hypercool Happy New Year 2000 funny programs and animations... We attached our recent animation from this site in our mail ! Check it out ! Even though the mail never was sent to RootsWeb, the return address is forged to make it appear as if it came from us. I will continue to work on figuring out if there is anything that we can do about this; in the meantime, please assure any concerned subscribers that subscribing to a RootsWeb list is not dangerous. :-) -- Regards, Tim Pierce RootsWeb.com lead system adminstrator - ----------------------------- What can you do? Protect yourself by never opening an attachment from someone you do not know or that looks suspicious. Use a virus protection program. Know what viruses are out there so you will recognize one when if you get it. There are sites that will help you such as: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ http://www.stanford.edu/group/partners/hoaxes.shtml http://kumite.com/myths/ http://www.mcafee.com/centers/anti-virus/default2.asp and many others. Remember, if you do not open the attachment, you can not get infected with the virus. Delete it. Then empty the trash bin to make sure it is gone. If you are using an email program that stores attachments elsewhere on your computer, such as Eudora, find it there and delete it too.