A new variant of the destructive Klez worm has had moderate success,prompting one antivirus company this past weekend to release free tools to deal with its spread.

The variant, carried by e-mail and known as Klez.e, overwrites victims' files with random content on the sixth day of odd-numbered months. It can spread automatically on Windows systems that use an unpatched version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

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In other words, for those of you using IE, the one that most of the attacks are directed at, get the free patch "windows update" that prevents this virus and many others, from even running on your system.

BTW you can run Netscape Communicator as your mail program, with IE and have many of the worms and virus attacks fall dead before you even see them.