# Do I have a virus?('puter question)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-have-a-virus-puter-question/58970>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 22, 2001, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-have-a-virus-puter-question/58970 "2001-03-22T06:34:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2001, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-have-a-virus-puter-question/58970/1 "2001-03-22T06:34:26Z")

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Lately, I’ve been having a problem with my e-mail. Whenever someone sends me an attachment, I goto download it. What I get is a file that is a .htm file that is simply a screen shot of the page that comes up when I goto download the attachment. This happens with both Hotmail and Yahoo. Anyone know what’s going on?

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**Author:** ![Evnglion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f04885/32.png) [@Evnglion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evnglion)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2001, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-have-a-virus-puter-question/58970/2 "2001-03-22T08:44:58Z")

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Not sure what is going on, but if you are worried about virii, then the last ting you should be doing is downloading attachments, thats how all the major virii spread now’a days 😉

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**Author:** ![Universal\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dfb087/32.png) [@Universal\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Universal_Dialect)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2001, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-have-a-virus-puter-question/58970/3 "2001-03-22T12:10:04Z")

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What file extentions are the files you are downloading, e.g. blah.exe

Or are you getting file attachments as websites, for this case the extention would be blah.htm or blah.html.

Please reply  
UD

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**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2001, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-have-a-virus-puter-question/58970/4 "2001-03-22T12:45:16Z")

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The attachments are simply pictures sent by people known to me- here’s a picture of me at the beach, etc. That would make them jpg or bmp files.