As is true with so many of these supposed virus warnings - the California virus is a hoax. The primary nuisance it causes is its ability to get a lot of people jamming up the Internet by sending copies and everyone they know. Before perpetuating a virus hoax, we would all do better to first check it out at any of a number of Internet sites that watch for this stuff. Try looking at: http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/scares/california.html - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- Hoaxes & scares California/Wobbler virus hoax Name: California/Wobbler virus. Type: Hoax email virus. Danger: None. Description: This hoax email warns that if you receive an email with an attached file called "California", you should not open the file as it contains the "WOBBLER" virus. It claims that this virus deletes all the files on the hard disk, and that it can run from Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, and can work on both PCs and Macintosh computers. The hoax attributes this information to a report from IBM. Whilst there is a joke program called WOBBLER (which makes the windows on your computer wobble), it is not a virus, and does not have the side-effects described in this message. It is a hoax. In common with many hoaxes, this one: falsely claims to describe an extremely dangerous virus falsely claims that the report was issued by a computer company asks you to forward it to all your friends As usual, you are urged not to pass on warnings of this sort, as the continued re-forwarding of chain letter hoaxes simply wastes email bandwidth. Also, you are urged not to run any program you receive via email, whether a warning exists about it or not. Programs received in this way should be treated as untrusted, and avoided. Important: It is impossible for a virus to exist in the normal text portion of an email. A virus could be carried within a file attached to an email, but this could only be spread by detaching the file and executing it or (if it contains macros) opening it with an application that could execute the viral macros.