muddy — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 12:05:20 +0000

Thanks guys!

Glad to know it isn't one of those mail sending virus things

openmind — Tue, 07 Sep 2004 07:49:46 +0000

Excellent answer Rob.

AyntRyte — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 23:25:03 +0000

I came across this before, so knew what to Google for:

The file appearing on your desktop with the filename ~, commonly known as a tilde, is a backup of your Windows Address Book. It is appearing as a result of the April 2003 Cumulative Patch for Outlook Express (330994). The patch is installed for Outlook Express 5.5 or 6 in response to a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to run code of the attacker’s choice on a user’s machine. To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker would have to be able to cause Windows to open a specially constructed MHTML URL, either on a web site or included in an HTML email message.

Unfortunately, there is a bug in the patch.Whenever you make a change in your Windows Address Book file (*.wab file), Windows makes a backup of this file. Generally this backup is called username.wa~ , however after the patch is installed the backup gets renamed to just ~ instead and saved in the directory where you start your Outlook Express. Most of the time, people start Outlook Express from a shortcut on their desktop, so the backup file gets placed there. This is how the tilde (~) file arrives on your desktop.

You can delete the file. Each time you make a change to your address book, this file will reappear. you can uninstall the patch, this will fix the tilde (~) file from appearing, however you will not be protected from this security vulnerability either.

openmind — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 21:20:05 +0000

Not a file I've ever come across before. Have you tried running a virus scanner on your system? Try soft deleting the file (back it up) and see if that has an adverse effect on anything.