Computer virus question

[JohnyCanuck]

My Mom just switched to a new ISP and within days she's received several emails that look like typical email viruses except there is no attachement. The subject lines say stuff like "re. Your document" or "re. Your letter" and the body of the email says "see the attached file," except there is no attachment with the email.

She is running McAfee and keeps the dat file up to date, but I told her just to delete questionable emails like this without even opening them. Since these have no attachments I figured they couldn't do any harm anyway. However someone mentioned to me that they are new viruses out that affect Windows XP which can be invoked just by opening the email without needing to open an attachment. Can anyone confirm whether they've seen emails like this without attachments and/or if they are aware of these viruses that can be spread by emails without attachments.

Thanks

[Old and In the Way]

1. I'm no expert, but I think if your .dat files are up to date, the infected

attachment will be quarantined. So you can open the e-mail safely...the attachment should not be available. I'm unaware that you can execute a virus by opening the e-mail, only if you can open the infected attachment.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Thanks oaitw

I'm not that familiar with McAfee. I used it several years ago and back then I seem to remember if it detected an attachment with a virus it wouldn't alert on it and give you the option to quarantine until you tried to open the attachment (at least the version I was using). My Mom isn't the most computer savy person in the world, but I'll tell her to see if she can check McAfee for quarantined files to verify that is what is happening.

[Don_G]

2. The Best Computer Resource I've Found

Is the "Daily Rotation.."

Clck on "Major Geeks" .

[sybylla]

4. Virus software is stripping off the infected file

Either the ISP is stripping the infected file or an antivirus program on the senders computer is. Experience suggests that Norton will do it if you configure it to scan your outgoing e-mail.

I have several friends who have agressive virus software either at the ISP level or on their own computer. They complain constantly that it strips off valid files too on both outgoing and incoming e-mail.

[Old and In the Way]

5. If you have an .exe file, you should zip it before sending.

Most systems will interpret this as a virus.