Friends, Thirty people sent in responses, which I believe is a new record number of responses to any query. Interesting. Most of these have experienced similar spam, and pointed out that the villain is the 'klez worm'. Klez attaches itself to a system, and then sends out spurious messages giving a 'From address from the local address book. All very Microsoft Outlook specific, I believe. Macs can't get infected, but they can suffer receiving the spurious messages. I'm using Eudora, which allows me to specify "Skip messages over 40K". For longer messages, it gives me the first several lines, and I can press a button to get the rest if I want it. Since I started doing that, spam has no longer been a bother. I imagine there is similar software for the PC, instead of Outlook. Several people said they aren't experiencing any problems. Several said that they always delete any attachments, unless from very trusted sources and the accompanying message appears to be legitimate. Others have received "REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS ASSISTANCE", which is actually a scam rather than spam. Some people are using spam-filter services. These services only accept mail from addresses you have authorized, or addresses which check out as being real addresses. It's a workable solution if you have a serious problem with spam, but it forces new correspondents to go through a response protocol the first time they send you mail. Dion Giles suggested: "The nonsense messages with attachments may be the Klez or Sircam or Magister virus. Need to sweep with current Norton or Grisoft or Vet or F-Prot. The attachments should not on any account be opened." Scott Bowling offered: -------------------------------------------- Some additional info: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,52055,00.html http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,52174,00.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/25542.html From the anti-virus folks: http://www.antivirus.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=WORM_KLEZ.H http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/•••@••.••• You can find a lot of info by searching for the klez worm (virus), as this thing is quite nasty and widespread. -------------------------------------------- bye for now, rkm http://cyberjournal.org