I did not write to the list earlier today

[Mickey Rowe <rowe@psych.ucsb.edu>]

<sigh>

I had hoped not to involve the entire list about this, but since queries
keep streaming in, this is probably the most efficient way to end it...

Louise Sugar (dragonfyr@ostel.com) wrote:

> can you contact me please?  I think you may have a virus or someone is
> scamming your address

I do not have any viruses infecting any machines I use.  I use strictly
Macintosh and Unix OS machines for all of my e-mail functions, so I'm
pretty much immune to these things.  Viruses on other people's machines
may spoof my address as happened this morning.  Unfortunately in this
case, the spoof went to the entire list, and it did have a plausible
subject line.  It also masked the addressees so that you might not have
noticed it went to the whole list; it makes sense for you to wonder
whether or not it might have been a "real" message.  Rest assured that it
was not.

The dinosaur list itself gets accused of sending viruses about 20 times
per day.  Clearly there are people out there who are or have been
associated with the list and who are harboring infections.  It would be
difficult if not impossible to determine who owns the infected machines,
so I generally just don't do anything about any of this.  Anyways, you
will never get an attachment from me unless it is accompanied by a plain
text description of what the attachment contains and even then, only if
there's some reason you might expect to get an attachment from me.  For
example, a researcher sent a pdf to owner-dinosaur this morning.  I've
asked him if he wants me to make it available.  If he says yes, then one
route would be that I will write to the list about it and inform you that
I will send you the pdf if you ask for it.  Aside from things like that,
you shouldn't expect to get attachments from me...

Okay, I hope this is now laid to rest.

Your humble administrator,

--
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@psych.ucsb.edu)