There would be an easy way to avoid any virus : being able to get complete informations about the e-mails you're about to receive before downloading them. For example : "do you want to download the MIME 1.0 message "hello" with the following attachement "pic.jpg" sent by "john@bibi.net" monday 15:35 hours ?" click yes or no. We should be able to make a selection before getting contents on our computer ! By now, we have no choice... It's against all notions of privacy. It works like this for every other downloads, so it could also work for e-mails. :) Eric