folks, I've just become aware of an MSN virus. This isn't a joke.

I was chatting to my nephew who sent me a message saying 'OMG you gotta see this pics' and a file transfer was initiated.

His PC crashed and when he rejoined, I asked him what the pics were that he was trying to show me.

He professed no knowledge of any pics but said he was having virus problems on his PC

The files are .zip files

BEFORE ACCEPTING ANY FILES FROM MSN BUDDIES, PLEASE CONFIRM THAT THE SENDER IS ACTUALLY SENDING YOU FILES

Lex, do you have any further information on this?

ermm only that it happened to me personally about 20 minutes ago hun

Okies. In that case I shall pin this topic

Well, duh, check the filename before you accept the transfer. <sarcasm>

Tip:

NEVER accept a zip, exe, pif, lnk or anything with an odd looking file extension. If you're still not sure, either DON'T accept it, or when it's arrived, scan it with an antivirus programme such as McAfee BEFORE opening it. You can tell if it's a picture - you'll get a preview in the message box!

Oh, and always make sure the antivirus is up to date before you do so. And if you don't have antivirus, you shouldn't be on the net!!

Teaches me for not being on here much.

Just been stung myself.

It happened to me last night, its jiggered my msn.

Yea, I got it off you.

I'll unblock you as and when your clean.

i havent used it for months and months

I never use MSN now.

I use a site called ebuddy which is basically the same thing as MSN but its alot more safe and secure.

You just log on with hotmail address and password and you can talk to all your contacts on whatever messenger service they use.

You don't need to download either which is an added bonus. :)

www.ebuddy.com

A good site to use if you MSN isn't working which I hear is alot of the time for some people.

i use to use it on an evening but i decided i had better things to do then lay on the sofa with the laptop warming my b*llocks

a few of my mates got this years ago, as far as i recall u need to go into safe mode and delete a certain file, but i cant remember which one!

I think Norbert's advice is spot on.

I regularly get e-mails with attachments from various folks . Being suspicious, I delete all of them. I have no idea what they are and I always ask the sender not to bother sending me stuff with attachments as I won't open them.

My particular pet hate is those forwarded e-mails that are sent as attachments. I NEVER open them.

here's the actual message:

Well, firstly I'd be curious as to why they'd feel the need to send them as a zip considering that most 'normal' pics like jpgs and gifs hardly conpress at all. And secondly, as zips can have anything in them, and it could also be a renamed exe file, I'd scan it before opening. Otherwise when you open the file you're executing the malicious content....

<yikes>

That's the sort of file I would NEVER open, no matter who was sending it.

The zips thisn is cos u cant send folders over msn, so unless it was zipped they would have to send the photos 1 by 1