Hello Everybody, Here is a message that came out of the RootsWeb main office last night. This, for a change, is not a hoax. The virus being discussed is a very real one-- I first heard about it a couple of weeks ago. If you have a virus protection program, I recommend you update it as soon as possible. And be careful about opening attachments to e-mail messages, even if it appears to come from someone you know. Jim Turner *************** 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>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 admonsterator and Chief Hacking Officer