Mail Viruses - True or false? ("J OIN THE CREW" message)

[Jeremiah Cruit-Salzberg]

I keep seeing these don't open this or that message or your computer
will spontaneously melt or whatever.  What I have always told everyone
is that mail messages are in ASCII (or HTML) and that they can't hurt.
That the only way you can be damaged by email is through attachments and
that you should never open any you receive (except from friends and only
after virus scanning).  I do know that you can set the option in many
mail programs to automatically open attachments, now this is the only
way that I could imagine an email damaging your system just by opening
it and so I tell everyone to make sure that is not checked.

If anyone knows of an email that can kill - not second hand or hearsay -
and can forward a copy to me, I would love to be disproved.  Or if you
can tell me how I might be wrong I would like to know so I can inform my
customers appropriately.  I'm not sure if you could possibly embed a
CGI, VBscript or Javascript that could wipe your computer when you
opened it.

By the by, here is the most recent message that 20 of my customers
forwarded me and wanted to know what sorts of measures I was going to
take to make sure we were safe:

	>    Subject:	virus warning
	>      
	>    Date: Thursday, Fe bruary 12, 1998 8:08 
	>      
	>    If you receive an email titled "J OIN THE CREW" DO NOT OPEN
IT.  IT 
	>    WILL ERASE EVERYTHING ON YOUR HARD DR IVE.  Forward this
letter out 
	>    to as many people as you can. This is a new, very malicious
virus 
	>    and not many people know about it.  This information was
announced 
	>    yesterday morning from  IBM; please share it with everyone
that 
	>    might access the internet.  Once again, pass this along to
EVERYONE 
	>    in your address book so that this may be stopped.   Also,
do not 
	>    open or even look at any mail that says "RETURNED OR UNABL
E TO 
	>    DELIVERY."  This virus will attach itself to your computer

	>    components and render them useless.  Immediately delete any
mail 
	>    items that say this.  AOL has said that this is a very
dangerous 
	>    virus and that there is NO remedy for it at this time.
Please 
	>    practice  cautionary measures and forward this to all your
online 
	>    friends ASAP. 


____
       Jeremiah Cruit-Salzberg
       Acting WAN Manager
       Seattle Public Library
       jeremiah at spl.org