I feel kind of left out. I've been checking my email all day and haven't receive the Melissa virus yet.

Anybody get zapped by it today?

-- rick blaine (y2kazoo@hotmail.com), March 29, 1999

Answers

I didn't get zapped...but.....about ten days ago, in the same mail download, I got a message from my cousin AND a forwarded one, with an enclosure, from her father. (my uncle) I clicked on the "To" portion of the address, and found that besides me, the message was being sent to a whole bunch of people with middle eastern sounding names. (My e mail and name is not of that ethnicity).

So I wrote to the cousin, and asked about her dad. She replied that it was unlikely that her father had sent the e mail, because he refused to get a computer and go on line.

I never opened the note, and I usually never open enclosures, they are usually pictures of drooly babies, and I just reply and tell them all how cute they are.

Could this have been an early version of Melissa?

Louisa

-- Louisa (notreading@mail.com), March 29, 1999.

I haven't received the virus either, thank goodness! I just heard about it on the news tonight, though, with Tom Brokaw. Must be a big one to make the news!

-- Julie Stansbery (Wonder@Woman.com), March 29, 1999.

my husband's workplace got 72 melissa emails yesterday morning. all were removed without opening.

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), March 30, 1999.

Yup...showed up here too. Not too malicious as long as your company was expecting it. It basically causes mischief by simply sending out 50 more emails every time someone opens it up, thus causing an email system overload. However, that type of virus coupled with something that affects the system could be absolutely devastating!

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), March 30, 1999.

In order to really get hammered, your company has to be running MS Outlook, which is used by the Melissa/Kwyjibo virus as a "vector" to re-transmit itself to other users via e-mail. Users of other messaging systems (e.g., Lotus Notes or cc:Mail, Novell Groupwise, sendmail systems like Netscape) can certainly receive the virus and get infected, but at least their systems won't automatically re-transmit it. And if your standard WP system isn't MS Word, you're completely immune.

Sure gonna mess up MS's marketing on Outlook. When the Morris sendmail "worm" wrought its havoc many years ago, some companies effectively banned use of what they called "UNIX mail" until everyone could be assured that all was well, which took months.

Didn't someone make a comment in another thread about proving that everything's interconnected? What a maroon. None of these systems talk to each other at all, nope, nope, everybody's an island of automation, yep, yep...

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), March 30, 1999.

Yep, my 15 year old received it, it ate up my aol. Another day of reinstalling, only hubby can do that. Two weeks ago we got a virus which ate up all the hard drive, whata nitemare, seems telling the little guy doesnt do any good either. Would anyone else download a file called 'conflict'? My son did. The end result was the erasing of hard drive, pass this along to your lil ones also. There are many virus's out here. We seem to get em all. Sigh.

-- consumer (private@aol.com), April 02, 1999.

Yes, the author, now in the hands of the FBI. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), April 02, 1999.