At the risk of appearing to advertise the product of one Company [this is not my intention] I post below, part of the  newsletter I received today from Agnitum - I use their Firewall software.
___________________________________________
Agnitum Newsletter (2003-08-15)
http://www.agnitum.com

- IN THIS ISSUE -
(*) Microsoft Recommends Outpost Firewall as Protection Against Blast
Worm
(*) Agnitum and Buhl Data Service Sign New Pact
(*) PC Pro Moves Outpost Pro to Its A List
(*) Outpost Pro Defeats ZoneAlarm Pro Once Again


**********************************************************
MICROSOFT RECOMMENDS OUTPOST FIREWALL AS PROTECTION AGAINST BLAST WORM

All Windows users around the world are under the very real risk of being
infected by a new mass-mailed Blast worm (also known as Lovesan,
MSBlaster or Poza). This malicious program has already infected more
than 3000,000 computers and has caused internal disruptions in many
companies and Internet service providers.

The worm uses a flaw in the Distributed Component Object service that is
hosted by a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) to take control of PCs.

Once the victim machine is infected, a hacker can execute any code on
it. A worm can consume memory or network bandwidth and cause the PC to
stop responding.

In order to replicate via the RPC vulnerability, Blast worm scans port
135. Fortunately, users of properly configured personal firewalls are
well protected against this malicious code. It is enough just to block
all incoming and outgoing connections to port 135 (TCP/UDP) to prevent
the infection.

Microsoft Corp. posted the article, "What You Should Know About the
Blaster Worm" on its web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp

Outpost Firewall is one of the few personal firewalls recommended by
Microsoft as defense against the Blast worm.  
___________________________________________

All the best Bill. [I started with their freeware version, but have recently bought the Pro version because I find the software so useful].
Other virus and firewall products are available.

New ALERT on e-mail virus 'Beagle'
For details goto:-

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...rnet_virus_dc_6

thanks Bill. I guess the take home lesson is, don't click on email attachments unless you know for certain that they're safe.

My advice is to not accept any eMail attachments. Unless you're eMailing yourself a file you would like on another computer.

And also, if your friend wants to send you something, tell them to meet you on IRC/AIM/MSN.