Has your virus checker stopped any Klez or Bugbear viruses recently? If you do not have a virus checker installed did you know that you could be sending copies of these viruses to your friends and acquaintances that are listed in your address book? The virus won't tell you - you have to check.

The current batch of email viruses is very successful because they switch the "from:" and "to:" sender and recipient fields at random selecting from your email address list. Thus, one of your friends - Friend A - may be ready to punch the lights out of another of your friends - Friend B - because A thinks that B is responsible for sending the virus maliciously - whereas you are the one responsible!

You really have a mess when you now add in the virus checking software systems on mail servers that automatically send an email to the address in the "from:" sender field on the message containing the virus. Completely innocent third parties are now blamed for sending a virus which they had nothing to do with in the first place.

An up-to-date virus checker is an essential part of netiquette these days. Connecting to the Internet without an up to date virus checker is like driving the wrong way down Main Street or double parking outside the hospital blocking the disabled access parking spots. There is no point feeling safe if you are still using the virus checker that was installed on your computer when you bought it in early 2001 or even early 2002 - upgrade now!

A final word is to think about your email address book especially if you are using Outlook Express or any email programme that accesses the default address book files. Do you really need all those addresses in there? What if every one of them received a file at random from your desktop? That is what many of these new viruses do - they email your files at random between your friends. They give a new meaning to file sharing!