Donna (That starts with a D:-), Don't Know about the "V" word. You will have to ask Rootsweb about that. Posts to other mailing lists did get through with it spelled out. The Melissa 'thing' is a macro 'thing' that works in conjunction with MS Word and MS Outlook. There are plenty of articles that explain how it works, so I won't. The main problem is that Melissa sends out lots of email from an infected computer, overloading mail servers. No other damage to infected computers is know at this time. A few months back Happy99.exe hit the net. It does the same thing as Melissa, but works with the Winsock.dll file. That means it only caused problems with people who have dialup (modem) connections. Melissa can also send email from computers connected to LANs. That is what makes her so bad. Since Melissa is a MS Word macro 'thing', the way you get it is to open MS Word documents that are infected. One fix is to get the MS fix which allows you to disable macros imbedded in the Word documents. All of the anti'thing' programs have an update to protect you. As for the junk mail, there isn't too much you can do. Outlook has some controls that allow you to screen junk mail and never see it. Some mail services sell their user lists and the email addresses of all who respond to email from users of the free services. Gotya there. There are easy ways to query domains for valid user addresses. Some ISPs don't allow this. My ISP doesn't, and I don't get all the junk mail at this address. AOL does allow a search of their valid users, mainly from the user profiles. On AOL I get all types of unwanted spam. The same info that I put on AOL to allow others with the same interests to contact me, also allows the spammers to get my address. Bob Bensing > -----Original Message----- > From: der@redrose.net [mailto:der@redrose.net] > Sent: Monday, March 29, 1999 7:05 AM > To: PALEBANO-L@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [PALEBANO-L] IMPORTANT! > > > Hi Linnea, > > I have 2 questions about this. > > > You may have already heard about this, but the e-mail wording of this > > particular computer "bug" sounds like it could be especially annoying to > > genealogists who may too easily trust documents sent along to them from > > distant cousins. It's called "Melissa." > > Yes, there was a very good article in the front section of the Lancaster > Sunday News yesterday about this. It seems to apply mainly to Microsoft > Windows e-mail. > > > > > > I cannot use the "V"-word or this message will not go through to you. > > Rootsweb does not allow attachments on any lists, in part as protection > > for subscribers from catching a computer "V". It also has filters so > > that hoax warnings won't bother list members. One of the reasons I love > > Rootsweb! > > I'm curious then how the "V" word got through on other Rootsweb lists?? > (about this one) . Also, I seem to receive a lot of e-mail that is what I > call "X or beyond rated" and I delete it, but wonder how does someone get > my e-mail address for that? I am currently only on Rootsweb lists. > Occasionally I will post to a newsgroup that is "open" so to speak, to > anyone who wishes to subscribe to it. Is this how these groups get my > e-mail address? Our server does have a program which we can utilize, but > many are concerned that they will then miss "real" mail. My bottom line > question is, is there any way we can avoid the "rotten" mail? In > the snail > mail world, we get "junk" mail, but not the X-rated kind, and I would be > interested to know how we can avoid it in the e-mail category. Thanks. > > Donna