Microsoft is discovering that, in addition to the annoyance of Justice department anti-trust lawsuits, there’s yet another downside to tightly integrating their browser and mail client into the Windows operating system: Email viruses. A new email-borne virus, nicknamed “Bubbleboy,” has been found — and it can infect Microsoft Outlook users even if they don’t open the virus-bearing email message’s attachment.

New Computer Virus ‘Bubbleboy’ Found
(Reuters, November 10, 1999)