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Bill Rogers has posted a warning about PENPALS VIRUS. I am sure he meant no
harm and I do not want to detract from the importance of this Listserver by
getting a thread about this going but this is truly OLD NEWS and is a total
hoax. Spreading this is akin to shouting "FIRE" in a theatre. That's just
what is intended in the first place.

To reassure everyone who may now be concerned, I quote from:
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html#

PENPAL GREETINGS! Warning Hoax

The PENPAL GREETINGS! Hoax shown below appears to be an attempt to kill an
e-mail chain letter by claiming that it is a self starting Trojan that
destroys your hard drive and then sends copies of itself to everyone whose
address in your mailbox. Reading an e-mail message does not run it nor does
it run any attachments, so this Trojan must be self starting. Aside from
the fact that a program cannot start itself, the Trojan would also have to
know about every different kind of e-mail program to be able to forward
copies of itself to other people. This warning is totally a hoax.

To satisfy yourself go to:http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html#deeyeneda
here is an excerpt:

PENPAL GREETINGS! Warning Hoax

The PENPAL GREETINGS! Hoax shown below appears to be an attempt to kill an
e-mail chain letter by claiming that it is a self starting Trojan that
destroys your hard drive and then sends copies of itself to everyone whose
address in your mailbox. Reading an e-mail message does not run it nor does
it run any attachments, so this Trojan must be self starting. Aside from
the fact that a program cannot start itself, the Trojan would also have to
know about every different kind of e-mail program to be able to forward
copies of itself to other people. This warning is totally a hoax.
If you receive an unvalidated warning, don't pass it to all your friends,
pass it to your computer security manager to validate first.

Sorry Bill, this had to be said!

C.W. Gray