You cannot get a computer virus by reading plain, unadorned text e-mail.

Viruses that are transmitted via e-mail are always sent as attachments which must be opened by the user for the virus to be activated. We have configured Doc-Net to reject anything other than plain text e-mail, so that ordinarily, attachments will not appear on Doc-Net.

However, on April 8, 1999, an attachment containing the Happy99 virus did successfully get sent out on Doc-Net. (The technical explanation is that the virus cleverly omits the "Contents" line under the full header, and it's this line that contains the terms that identify the message as containing an attachment. Therefore, there are no terms to be matched against the taboo list. We have since additionally modified the configuration file to specifically reject the Happy99 virus.)

Since all legitimate attachments should be "bounced" by Doc-Net, please assume that any Doc-Net message that gets through containing an attachment (easily identified by the attachment icon that appears after the message) is highly suspect for containing a virus. DO NOT CLICK ON THE ATTACHMENT ICON IN ANY DOC-NET MESSAGE! The virus cannot install itself on your computer or do any damage if you do not open the attachment that contains the virus program.