Electric Mail Protects Against 'Love Letter' Virus, Contained Virus Worse Than 'Melissa,' Says Company Experts.

Business Editors

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 2000

The Electric Mail Company Inc. (CDNX:ELE.) (the "Company"), the world's first company to offer outsourced virus scanning services to businesses, today confirmed its unique E-mmunity(TM) service provides immediate protection against the "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs" virus, which is currently spreading rapidly around the globe. This virus has been declared by Electric Mail to be of more concern than both the "Melissa" virus and the "Worm.ExploreZip" email virus that surfaced in early summer of last year.

"In less than 2 hours, we already have prevented thousands of incidents of this from spreading," said Iain J.S. Black, Company President and CEO. "Companies not using our E-mmunity service should be concerned, as this particular virus not only searches and makes use of existing address lists within a user's email program, but also actually modifies files on a user's PC to enable future spreading of the virus through means including popular chat programs."

He continued, "This virus attack has caused email shutdowns of several government offices and large firms around the world as administrators attempt to isolate and control the virus. This challenge is magnified and has been made even more complex as most virus scanning efforts deployed do not scan both inbound AND outbound email, as E-mmunity does."

"Furthermore, a virus spreading as rapidly as this one creates an unmanageable demand for fixes or patches. Companies depending on web sites of antivirus software providers are having their efforts hampered and delayed by this competition for access," he concluded.

Once activated, this destructive and difficult-to-detect virus propagates itself by reading through a Microsoft Outlook user's email address list and sends a copy of itself to everyone included in it. Further, it modifies a variety of commonly found files on a user's hard drive, including popular graphics and multimedia file formats such as JPEG and MP3. Of additional concern, this virus also modifies files used in popular chat programs, particularly the popular "mIRC", enabling a user's PC to infect any and all other participants in a chat session.