OT Re: [Sca-cooks] Recent Test

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Phlip:
>Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...
>
>>  Mark S Harris just sent a virus.
>>
>>  Mark, be warned, you have a trojan.
>>
>>  Althea, wise to these monsters...
>
>Mark Harris, aka Stefan, does NOT have a virus- he runs a Mac. Someone else
>on this List is infected and the bloody thing is spoofing everyone's
>addresses.
>
>Whoever it is, is likely on both EK and MK Cook's Lists, and has Margali's
>old address from over a year ago (if it's the same person). Since this is
>also true of me, I have very carefully checked and rechecked my computer,
>and I'm clean (not to mention, I also lost Margali's old address a few
>months ago when I installed a new program.
>
>Please check your machines, people- someone is infected.

Sorry to intrude with this, but on a 
slightly-less-topical-if-just-as-important note, I wonder if anybody 
can help with a question or two...

On the old-style Macs (which occasionally had viruses written for 
them, or suffered from various MS macros and such), you checked with 
any of several pieces of virus-scan software, preferably booting from 
a certified-virus-free, locked volume, such as a Virex or Norton 
Anti-virus, CD. (I remember the days of the Disinfectant Floppy, 
though.)

When you guys scan your PCs for viruses, are you doing it in some 
similar manner, or just running some antivirus software sitting on a 
hard drive that may be infected? If the latter, doesn't that threaten 
the integrity of the results? Or am I belaboring the obvious? Also, 
do these viruses work on people who use SMTP servers, and actually 
have no local address book file? (Or do SMTP server users actually 
have a local address book file as some kind of backup?)

Adamantius, who just had to change his address in spite of being, 
technically, virtually immune to most of this stuff...