Once again Baruch is receiving many email viruses from the Internet. We are
now seeing virus traffic including the following:

   - messages which contain warnings about your email account being
compromised, unavailable, insecure, disabled, cancelled, etc.;  these
messages may appear to be from a Baruch or CUNY administrator; they are
not; they contain a virus; please delete them immediately;

  - messages which are empty or which appear to contain attachment files
which are missing (this happens because virus attachments are being blocked
by Baruch's anti-virus servers); please delete.

In general, users should be alert to the two main aspects of current virus
outbreaks:

1. Email viruses generally spread via email attachment files.  We all should
be particularly careful with any attachment.  Usually, if you do not click
on the attachment you will not get a virus.  Never just open an attachment -
always think first.  Try to make sure that the attachment is legitimate.
The traditional advice is to avoid any attachment which comes from someone
you do not personally know and trust; this still holds;

2. However, contemporary viruses are elaborately designed to deceive users.
If John Doe's computer is infected, the virus typically sends itself to
everyone in John's email address book, often "spoofing" the return address
with someone else's name.  So, you may receive a virus email which is
"From" Harry Smith.  This leads to widespread confusion:  you think that
Harry sent you a message which actually came from John's computer; Harry may
get numerous bounce-back "cannot deliver this" messages referring to emails
he never sent.

It is therefore critical to understand that attachments should not be deemed
safe just because you know the (apparent) sender.  All users now have to
treat any attachment with care and a degree of skepticism, regardless of the
"From:"  line.  Again, always think before you click.  Please also keep in
mind that these viruses create a good many hoax mails and false-positive
error messages which can be disregarded.

Users with any concerns or questions about potential virus problems should
contact the BCTC help desk at (646) 312-1010 or send an email to
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