Fran

It has been happeningv to me and others of my aquaintance for a few months
now.  Please read the following:

That "~" (tilde) file is most probably appearing as the result of installing
the "April 2003, Cumulative Patch for Outlook Express (330994)". Microsoft
is aware of the problem and is supposedly working on a fix. Many people are
experiencing this problem and from what I've read about this problem that
icon will also reappear when you reply to an e-mail and you have your
Outlook Express set up to enter the persons e-mail address to your address
book whenever you reply to an e-mail. You can either just put up with it or
follow the uninstall directions for the patch at the link below.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/critical/330994/default.asp

HTH

Alan Hodges
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fran Bott" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2003 11:13 AM
Subject: [PCSOFT] Unidentified item on desktop


Yestersday I went to 2 different students houses for various reasons, and
both if them had the same thing on thier desktop. Both students run Win XP.

It is an unidentified icon, with a tilde (~) as the name with no file
extension. I opened one in wordpad and it was unreadable.

When I saw it on the second machine I ran SpBot Search and Destroy. While it
did remove some spyware, the icon remained. Virus definitions are up to
date.

I am hoping someone has seen this and might know what it is. I suspect some
type of spyware, but not having seen this before, I can not be sure.

Any Ideas?

Fran Bott




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