Some people on the list have received an email virus from "Valued Acer Customer". This is a new virus that is very tricky. When someone tries to open the attachment, if they have Microsoft Outlook, the virus scans all the mail they have saved, and finds messages that have not been read. It then extracts a portion of the mail message, and constructs a response like this: 'Mark Dionne' wrote: ==== (about 10 lines of the original mail message} > Take a look to the attachment. and appends the virus payload as an attachment named Sorry_About_Yesterday.DOC.pif or Pics.ZIP.scr or perhaps other names. The Subject in the mail is also constructed based on the original mail, so that mine was: Re: [NYRENSSE] Re: Divorces in NY The bottom line is that a whole bunch of people get email messages that appear to be replies to their own previous messages, and are not suspicious that a virus may be attached. I don't know if this virus does any additional harm. I suspect it is the MTX virus, which is very harmful. See: http://www.pchell.com/virus/mtx.shtml =========================================================== NEVER execute attachments that end in .scr, .pif or .exe!!! ===========================================================

I don't believe in virus messages to genealogy lists but this one is a bad one and it seems many of you have received the infected message and haven't heard about it. DO NOT OPEN THAT ATTACHMENT! Delete the message. This website explains it... http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/pf/w32.badtrans.13312@mm.html Here's a link for free virus software www.grisoft.com and a free firewall www.zonealarm.com . I haven't tried it but one of the listmanagers said it found an infected file by this virus on her system. Good luck! Vivian, South Bend, IN