Mail from a student regarding email that contained a virus:

     Dear Prof. Patt,

     Today I received an email from the 306 list but did 
     not recognize the name of 
     the person.  There was no body and it contained a screen saver file.  I 
     checked out the file and found that it was infected with a W32.Klez.H@mm 
     virus.  Lucky for me my virus software caught it and got rid of it.

     More info can be found and a fix can be found at:

     http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.klez.h@mm.html

     It says that virus sends various infected files to people 
     so the file that people receive isn't always the same one.

     I thought I should share this with you since it used the 306 list 
     as the TO: thus all or many of the people in 306 may have received 
     this email.  The email was from a Yahoo! account.  I don't recall 
     the exact address but the email didn't have a body.

     <<name withheld>>

This is the first time I have heard of a virus being sent via the 306 email address
 list.  Still, viruses have been getting more and more common these days.  The way
 I handle it is simple: if I do not recognize the name of the sender, I simply delete
 it.  I try to be sure they are not malicious before I open them.   Is this foolproof? 
 No, but it does go a long way.

I will ask one of my TAs to send you some pointers to useful information that is
 available on viruses.

Bottom line: be careful.  There are a lot of jerks out there. 

Good luck.

Yale Patt