I got the tilde thing on my desktop a few times last month. Opened it up in notepad and
it looked like it was bits and pieces of my Outlook Express address book. I got paranoid
and did a virus scan (mcAfee) and nothing showed up. I just deleted the file, it came back
a few times and then never showed up again. OE did say that it didn't shut down correctly,
once... but I haven't seen anything bad since. I'm still curious about it too, but nothing seems
to be showing up as infected.
Side note: When I hit the Reply button to write to this thread, I had a Microsoft Frontpage 2000
installation window popup and start installing something... SPONTANEOUSLY! I own Frontpage
2000, but never use it and haven't tried to install anything from it recently. I hit the cancel button
and it started backtracking itself then I get a window that says, "The file Microsoft Frontpage 2000"
is not a valid installation package for the product Microsoft Frontpage 2000. Try to find the installation
package "DATA1.MSI" in a folder from which you can install Microsoft Frontpage 2000.
What the heck is this?? Now I'm really paranoid! Time to scan, maybe with a different Virus scanner! Ugh