Is the Motley Fool really being foolish...

[Applespider]

There's an article on the Motley Fool website about virus protection and the vast amount of cash some of them hold in which the writer claims that his Powerbook was hit by an unknown virus which wiped out his Office X and Norton AV then wiped out his inbox.

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2004/mft04081714.htm

So... a Word macro that managed to do something nasty to Word? I find it hard to believe that in this large community no-one else reported something that had this effect. Or perhaps just a switcher who didn't try the 'delete preferences' and re-install before assuming 'virus'

[garybUK]

Unless... the word macro outputted a hardcoded apple script that once written to the file, executed shutting down the Office App and deleting it, once its got the applescript executed it could do some damage.....

hmmm i doubt it though, who knows what level of a user he is....

[Raid]

There's an article on the Motley Fool website about virus protection and the vast amount of cash some of them hold in which the writer claims that his Powerbook was hit by an unknown virus which wiped out his Office X and Norton AV then wiped out his inbox.

I don't think that it's a 'virus' at all. First he's says it's only affected his office applications which is strange considering viruses usually would affect everything. Then he goes on to say he used the much maligned Norton AV, which many posters here claim does more harm then good at the best of times. I think you can blame is trust in Norton AV for 'finding & eliminating' the 'virus'.