Hopefully I'm not revealing any significant confidential info below. But since Edna Goodwin has evidently been temporarily removed from the WiMilwau list and can't explain things or defend herself on this list, I've decided to now duplicate her very nice and helpful off-list e-mail to me that I just opened up. For me, this note of hers also throws more light on viruses than anything I've read so far. I don't know to whom Bob is referring when he mentions "she" in his last posting (see below), and I still have no idea what he means by "Virus Warning was the pif attachment" (this sounds nice). But this is not so important now, and I appreciate Bob's input. And the world is more interesting when lots of lingering mysteries still abound. ........John ________________________________________________ << Subj: Virus Date: 11/27/01 11:18:50 PM Central Standard Time From: wgoodwin@pahrump.net To: JQMagie@aol.com Hello John This is Edna Goodwin responding to your inquiry. Yes, there was a virus on my computer. It is gone now. It was the first virus I have ever had. I do not open any attachments, I had Norton Anti-Virus running, I had Norton up to date; I was backed up - all of those but I still got the virus. From reading about it, it seems that this particular virus, called a worm, can get into any Microsoft product and goes to the person's address book. Apparently the virus was in a regular e-mail that I opened but it was blank. There was an attachment with it but I did not open it. Once I saw that, I did not send anyone an e-mail nor had I done so several days before as I was busy with Thanksgiving company, cooking, etc. I used to answer e-mail inquiries for a German genealogical group and I believe it was one of those inquirers but I have not done that since last May. Regardless, through my Norton Anti-Virus software, I was able to eliminate it from my computer quite easily once Norton got the "fix" for the virus. I know that all these terms that people use are confusing. I did post an inquiry on the Milwaukee list and I believe corresponded with one person individually on that list. However, I just received a notification that I have been unsubbed (un-subscribed or kicked off) from the Milwaukee list. Best wishes to you. Edna >> ________________________________________________ << Subj: Re: [WiMilwau] Virus Warning was the pif attachment ?? Date: 11/28/01 8:13:05 AM Central Standard Time From: madgrad77@clsurf.com (Robert W Fay) Reply-to: WIMILWAU-L@rootsweb.com To: WIMILWAU-L@rootsweb.com John, What she means is that she got a virus from William Goodwin on another list. I also got one from his computer in response to one of my recent posts on this list. This action is entirely done by the virus and Mr Goodwin is likely completely unaware of it. As I indicated previously, to keep this virus from spreading all over the list, I am temporarily unsubscribing infected machines and had to do that with Mr Goodwins machine. Anyone that is interested in this subject should refer to the urls I gave yesterday which have much more info. Bob Fay On 27 Nov 2001, at 23:12 JQMagie@aol.com <WIMILWAU-L@rootsweb.com> wrote: > Re: the William Goodwin posting of 10/19/01, etc. > > I'm still having trouble understanding Bob Fay's memos today. I > very much appreciate his posting these. But I also still have no > idea, for example, what this posting subject of his means: "Virus > Warning was the pif attachment." > But MANY thanks, Bob, for the virus alerts today. And I hope > to learn more as soon as I check out the URLs that you have kindly > provided (duplicated below)...... >> ________________________________________________

<snip> and I still have no idea what he means by "Virus Warning was the pif attachment" <snip> What Bob means by 'Virus Warning was the pif attachment' is that he was replying to a message with the subject 'the pif attachment' but changing the subject to 'Virus Warning'. It's common for people who change the subject to include an indication of what the old subject was. It probably makes more sense if you include punctuation: Subject: Virus Warning (was: the pif attachment) Cheryl __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month. http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1