GR Mailbag: Our Mailman Has A Terrible Cold

Dearest GR Mailbag fans,

As most of you have noticed, we haven't updated the Mailbag in several weeks. The reason? Viruses. Lots of 'em. Like, thousands.

But it's not what you think. No one is specifically out to get us or trying to bring down the GR machine 'o fun in the name of some small, useless country, like Belgium.

Rather, it's a simple matter of GR being around for so long and being on so many random e-mail lists. See, we've been getting nailed by copies of the WORM_KLEZ and WORM_YAHA viruses.

Both of these viruses operate along the same lines. When executed, the worms propagate themselves by sending copies out to members of the infected user's recipient list. It will attach a random subject line, though over time you'll see some repeated more than others.

The KLEZ is particularly interesting because it also randomly changes the 'From' field. This makes it very hard to track down the infected computer. On more than one occasion, a member of the GR staff has gotten a copy of the virus that they apparently sent themselves, despite the fact that none of us work on any infected computers.

Since the various GR mailboxes are on so many random recipient lists, we have literally become a lightning rod for the viruses, getting in upwards of 200-300 copies a day across our boxes. Due to sheer volume, this has made it very hard to check and sort anything beyond our personal GR accounts.

Suffice to say, we're working on the problem and we hope to have some solutions shortly. In the meantime, please bear with us and don't be angry that we haven't been updating the Mailbag. Instead, check out the big Mailbag Archive and relive some of your favorite letters and answers. That's what we've been doing, at least.

- GR