I also got an email from a contributor to this group that he did not send. It came to me while I was in Vegas and he was far away from his computer. He and I also had both done virus scans and our computers are both clean. It appears that there are viruses out there that somehow are taking email addresses from peoples address books or from filing cabinets or caches of emails recently received or sent or from BBS and NewsGroups and sending to others using those addresses. For example, the virus may take your name from a recently received letter on my computer and send a letter to a third party using your address not mine. Something like that. I have also heard of the possibility that a virus could harvest names from a BBS or NewsGroup and send itself around to participants in the groups without even having to infect a computer to spread itself. I suppose that could be possible.

Therefore it appears that a.) the sender may not know of the email and in fact may not have sent it and b.) the sender may not be infected at all.

Incidentally the suspicious file that was attached to the email that I received was

Ubhz.zip (56028 bytes) DL Time (16800 bps): < 1 minute

The carrying letter had no text and was only the routing information. The title of the letter was,

Subj: Cbc, cbf

The advice to be attentive, even to mail from familiar people, is good advice. I, sadly, have gotten to the point where I am hesitant and in fact unlikely to open files, even from my friends. Fortunately one of the benefits of AOL is that I can open the letters and not fear of viruses. That gives me an opportunity to confirm with a known sender if the attachements are legit. I have offered this advice before and will again. Make sure you have email software that offers a preference that DOES NOT OPEN ATTACHMENTS, when you access your email. Eudora offers that option and as I said, AOL is set up where you have to actively open a file. Unless there is a change with newer versions, I believe Outlook does NOT offer this option. When you open your mail the attachements open also. THAT IS VERY DANGEROUS.

I just did a Symantec search and can't find any info on the info above. However, as I said the sender did email me back to say he didn't send it and had no knowlege of it. Therefore I still believe it is very suspicious. If anyone else has any experience with the above mentioned file and email please do let me know.