Not to be an alarmist, but thought I'd mention what has happened to me.<BR>A couple of weeks ago I booked the Hotel Catalunya in Alghero, Sardinia for a stay next summer. This was booked directly with them after a couple of emails back and forth, and confirmed to me. A few days ago, my email contained a message from the hotel which included an attachment. Thinking they were sending me a more formal confirmation, I attempted to open it but could only get a blank screen. I tried to do a reply asking them to resend or tell me what the message was, but the reply came back that the addressee was unknown and could not be "delivered". I thought that strange, but looked up their email address, slightly different from the one on their message and emailed them directly asking what the message was about. Here is the reply I received from them this morning:<BR>"we are really sorry, but we have to inform you that the message you received from Hotel Catalunya was a virus. The diffusion of this virus doesn't depend on us. Some unknown person sent this virus to us, and automatically it spreads without any control, to the people who wrote us e-mails.<BR>We apologize with you for this problem"<BR>I have not detected any problems and perhaps since I was unable to open the attachment, my virus scan stopped the problem? But thought I'd warn people in case this might not be an isolated incident.

I got something similar yesterday. It was an e-mail from a B&B in Ireland that I had emailed almost 2 years ago regarding room availability. The title indicated that there was an attachment, but when I opened up the e-mail, there was no attachment.<BR><BR>Sounds like we're getting attacked by the European Hotel Virus.

There's no need to blame Italy or Ireland. This sounds like W32.Badtrans.B@mmm, a "worm" virus that was identified and included in Norton and Mcafee virus updates on Nov. 24. I received three messages with this virus Monday--from Americans. You should do a live virus update if you haven't done so since Nov. 24.

Received a similar email today from Italy regarding a cancelled reservation.<BR>Couldn't open the attachment. It looks like there is a video or sound message attached.

"It looks like there is a video or sound message attached"<BR><BR>That's the one. I got it myself from somebody in America. If you have Outlook Express, it will try to open itself when you preview the message although you haven't clicked on the attachment.<BR>

Yep, got it from a Sorrento hotel. Didn't open it, as they had already confirmed that they were closed 2 months ago and it was blank. The attachment was a mp3. Strange.

yes, Sorrento hotel, mp3 that read YOU ARE FAT ..very weird.<BR>

It's not just coming from travel related sources. Within the last 4 days, I've received about 7 msgs, alledgedly from friends, subject line innocent enough - references to past communications - but blank screen with phrase "select to play", or something like that, then can't get to it. Sounds similar to what Michelle is talking about. All the email addresses had a _ in front of their correct email address, and so couldn't automatically reply back to (when I tried, bounced back as undeliverable. Later the friends involved said they thought it was a virus too. It seems to just arbitrarily attach itself to any msg world-wide, as one came this morning from a friend in Hungary, and the subject line was something we discussed looong ago.

No doubt about it - there's something going around. I too got a message yesterday (from someone in U.S.) with infected MP3 file attachment. Subject heading referenced a message I had sent him earlier that day. Luckily, Norton AntiVirus software detected infection immediately. Can't stress enough the importance of updating your virus definitions regularly!!!

That is called the "BadTrans" mail virus. It masks itself as another file...often with .pif, .mp3, .src and others.<BR><BR>Do not open it. If you do it will go into your deleted and current email...and your address book...and send itself to all those people. If you start getting a lot of returned mail, you probably have the virus.<BR><BR>Go to http://www.mcafee.com<BR><BR>They have insructions on how to remove it from your system.