Indigo, et al,

	Tell your boss she/he owes you lunch.  As Scott has stated there are
ways to sneak malicious bugs into Outlook and Outlook Express simply by
opening the e-mail and not the attachment.  (This goes for Mac users of
Outlook as well as some viruses attack Microsoft where ever it is found.)

	A good anti-virus package will be monitoring your e-mails and your
internet surfing, plus any software that has internet capabilities.  If it
doesn't - lose it and upgrade to something better.  

	Look at the McAfee or Norton suites with firewall.  Personally, I
use the Norton on a system with broadband access and have yet to be
successfully attacked.  (Knock on wood)  They keep trying to no avail.

	As for your news cookies there are two things you can do (besides
the obvious cancel your subscription).  1) Send a letter to the editor
discussing their trawling habits through your computer.  This is called data
mining and can be quite serious.  Honestly not all businesses are aware of
how their on-line presence comes across.
	2) Use "Spybot Search and Destroy".  I love this program and it
comes with a little tool called "Teatimer" (don't ask me why) that sits in
your program tray and makes sure nothing is changing your registry without
your permission.  Spybot S&D in combination with AD-Aware (another fun toy)
will leave your system feeling as fresh as an Irish Spring.

	Come to think of it, I've never really had a problem with cookies in
e-mails.  It may be because I read all my stuff as plain text in Outlook.  I
honestly don't know if that inherently would void the cookie chaos or if
I've been lucky.  Hmmm...

Have a better day,

Christopher

-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Scott Sumner
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2005 3:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Important info on Viruses for all to heed!!!!

With the proliferation of Outlook and Outlook Express and the capabilities
of Java and other HTML associated languages, it is possible to catch viruses
simply by allowing the message to appear in the preview pane of these
programs.  The only way I've found to approach safety in terms of opening
unsolicited e-mails is to use a text based system such as Linux Mail or
Pine.  This literally opens only the text of the message and does not
execute any scripting that may be including in the e-mails.  Unfortunately
it also requires access to a Linux or Unix system to read your mail.

	Scott Sumner
	[log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Indigo Nights
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2005 4:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] Important info on Viruses for all to heed!!!!


Chris, can you resolve this issue for me and my boss
and I had different answers to this dilemma.

We all know not to click on (unsolicited) attachments
because they can contain the virus.

However, can you sometimes catch the virus by simply
opening the email (not necessarily showing the virus
icon).

My thinking is yes, in some instances you can
depending upon if there is scripting contained in the
email (html type emails) that can wreak havoc with
your registry.  I know that emails opened from various
news sources can impose nasty little cookies that try
to crawl the firewall--the paper from Dallas does this
with its Beloit interactive cookies (of which it
plants three or four at a time so you have to hunt to
pick them all off).

My boss seems to think you can only catch a virus by
clicking on the attachment.

Thoughts?

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