~ file

[gianluca]

Hallo everybody.
I notice there is a straqnge file in each home direc tory of my pc.
The file name is just ~, without any extention.
If I open it with an editor I see all my mail address in it.

Do you know any news about the possibility it could be a virus?
Obbiously I have already scanned with avast home.

Thank you for any help.

Gianluca

[igor]

The file is created by MS Oulook (Express). I have no idea why it's there or how to suppress its creation, though.

[DavidR]

It is as Igor said created by MS outlook express and it does it when you make changes to your addressbook.

OE is trying to backup your old address book and the intention was (I believe) to have a addressbookname.wa~ instead of the .wab extention of the original addressbook, but for some reason it is screwed up and only the ~ is left as the filename.

I don't think that there is any way to supress this action.

In most cases it is seen on the desktop, it is safe to either rename it (e.g. backup.wab) to retain a copy of your old addressbook or simply delete it.