ADMIN: Strange messages and computer viruses

[Shaun Hately]

No: HPFGUIDX 147342

Greetings from Hexquarters!

At least some people have noticed some rather odd messages appearing 
on HPForGrownups recently - messages with strange or meaningless 
subject headings, that contain either no text or very little text and 
often a notice that says:

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

These messages are nearly always the product of one of a number of e-
mail viruses that are circulating around the internet at any time.

These e-mail viruses reproduce themselves by e-mail. The way they 
typically work is that they raid the address book of the e-mail 
program of an infected computer and send e-mails that look like they 
come from one of the addresses in that address book to other 
addresses in that address book. This means that they appear to come 
from someone who almost certainly did not send them and has no 
control over the fact they have been sent. But because that address 
may be that of a member of this list, yahoogroups allows the message 
to get onto the list, thinking it must be a message from the person 
whose name appears on it.

This list is set up to strip off any attachments to e-mails, so the 
virus never reaches this list and you cannot become infected by the 
messages on this list for that reason. They are annoying, but they 
are not dangerous.

However, there are plenty of other ways that such a message could 
infect you - the virus could send itself as if it came from the 
HPForGrownups at yahoogroups.com address if that is in the address book 
of an infected computer, for example, and it could be sent to you 
from anyone who has your address in their address book.

So it is very important that all users of Windows based computers 
have up to date anti-virus software installed on their computer. 
While viruses can be written for non-Windows computers, they are much 
rarer, so this is most important for Windows users.

There are a wide range of anti-virus products available and it is not 
our place to suggest which one you should use. But there is an anti-
virus program called AVG which is available free to home users at: 
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 that is certainly worth looking at if 
you have no other protection.

Shaun AKA Crikey Elf
For the List Elves