Re: "virus" going around

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

Back to reading the digest again, after a two-day hiatus. I was, of course,
a conduit for the badtrans.b virus, which I received from another digester,
with an old subject line, absolutely blank text area, and an attachment
which I would swear I didn't open, yet it certainly got into my computer as
I got feedback from about a dozen recipients (What nice people you all are!
No profanity!) and a bunch more as returned mail that had been rejected by
the protective systems of various businesses where other digesters
send/receive their digest mail. There were undoubtedly others who tried to
contact me about it all, but didn't get through; badtrans alters the
'sender's' address, adding an undeline before the first character, so it
looks legitimate to the recipient but is unusable for a reply. Ingenious.
So, first, my most sincere apologies to anyone who caught it through me.
Second, equally sincere thanks for all the good advice- yes, I do have
Norton AV but not the newest version and had not been getting daily updates.
And third, special thanks to Gert-Jan in Holland for the heads-up about
'back doors' in MS Windows. Hadn't heard that, and hadn't known
about/thought about updating Windows.

So- new AV software coming, new daily update routine. My first experience
with a virus, and I hope my last. Sure doesn't feel good.

John H.

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