I've been getting a lot of e-mails the last couple of days, on all three of my e-mail accounts. All are the same; and all are hoaxes. If any of you get a message demanding that you delete a little utility named "jdbgmgr.exe", please just delete the message. This is a scam that runs across the Internet periodically, in which some delinquet tries to "scare" people into deleting part of their operating system. This particular utility is part of the Windows Operating System, and has been for many years. It's "working name" is "Microsoft® Debugger Registrar for Java"; and its function is to resolve differences in the various Java applets that download from the Internet and the Internet Explorer application. I do not know if Netscape uses it, but since it is an integral part of the Windows OS, I suspect that it does. There is a virus that does target this utility, but contrary to the message's warnings, all of the anti-virus vendors have had fixes for it for at least 5 years. For more information on this, and many other hoaxes, refer to this Symantec webpage: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html

McAfee and the Dept of Energy's watchdog site and several others also offer information on these hoaxes and "urban legends".

Pickett