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From symantec web site

" Learn More About Viruses and Worms
What is the difference between a computer virus and a computer worm?

Viruses are computer programs that are designed to spread themselves from
one file to another on a single computer. A virus might rapidly infect every
application file on an individual computer, or slowly infect the documents
on that computer, but it does not intentionally try to spread itself from
that computer to other computers. In most cases, that's where humans come
in. We send e-mail document attachments, trade programs on diskettes, or
copy files to file servers. When the next unsuspecting user receives the
infected file or disk, they spread the virus to their computer, and so on.

Worms, on the other hand, are insidious because they rely less (or not at
all) upon human behavior in order to spread themselves from one computer to
others. The computer worm is a program that is designed to copy itself from
one computer to another over a network (e.g. by using e-mail). The worm
spreads itself to many computers over a network, and doesn't wait for a
human being to help. This means that computer worms spread much more rapidly
than computer viruses. "


 http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/wormvsvirus.html

Marjorie: That makes sense.  I have been using Outlook Express and got the
Worm transmitted to me-  although my wife uses Netscape and got the Iloveyou
bug caught by her virus protection software.  Who knows?

Charlie