Since we have had a problem in the past with viruses I thought this would be of interest to the group. Judy Creel Auburn, WA Seems like a pretty simple way to stop email viruses that exploit your address book from spreading. You could use any combination of characters that begin with a nonnumeric value (a symbol)... Stopping The Spread of Email Viruses A clever and simple solution. This tip won't prevent you from getting viruses (you still have to scan those attachments before opening them), but it will stop those viruses from latching onto your address book and sending itself out to others. To avoid spreading computer viruses, create a Contact in your e-mail Address Book with the name: !0000 and NO e-mail address. This contact will then show up as your first contact in your Address Book. If a virus attempts to do a "send all" on your contact list, your PC will put up an error message saying that "The message could not be sent. One or more recipients do not have an e-mail address. Please check your Address Book and make sure all recipients have a valid e-mail address." You click on OK and the offending (virus) message would not have been sent to anyone. Of course, no changes have been made to your original contacts list. The offending (virus) message may then be automatically stored in your "Drafts" or "Out box" folder. Go in there, delete the offending message and give your system a thorough work-over with a reputable anti-virus software package. Problem is solved and virus is not spread. ----------------------------------------- Note: This works with Outlook Express and Eudora. It won't work where the email package requires an email address for each entry. Dawn Baron Cisco Systems, Inc.