Tom Lehrer saw this coming. CLICK HERE (make sure your speakers are on) for a relevant page, on a brilliant site.

There are one or two misunderstandings floating around in this thread. In particular, Jeri, you need to know that there are viruses around now that do NOT require file attachments to be opened. One such that is rampant at present is known as MTX.9244. This proliferates as a trojan and a worm. The trojan element manifests itself as an incoming email with no subject, no message and a file attachment that is gobbledegook and can't be opened. It arrives simultaneously with a genuine email from someone already (and usually unknowingly) infested, and claims to be from that same person.

At this point, if you're using Windows with OE or Navigator, your system is already infested. Moreover it will crash if you try to download, access or run McAfee or Norton or even go to their sites. As far as I know, Command is the only solution to this one, and costs about 20 bucks I think. But you'll also have to edit your registry file in line with their instructions. Also you'll probably need to reinstall winsck.dll and any other files the virus has over-written.

Surely it is only a matter of time before we're all walloped by something really clever. Those dependent on Windows and OE are certainly the biggest targets. Justa Picker looks well defended, but for good measure I'd have the linux/Opera combination standing by on a second hard disk. .

Bill and Justa Picker, where ISPs say they don't support certain email packages etc, what they usually mean (but don't say) is that these packages will run fine, but that their helpdesks aren't trained to give you any help.