It is still very unlikely that you will activate a virus by merely opening an e-mail. Attachments are very common nowadays, however, and many people open them without thinking. Here at Crown, we are insulated from many of the problems experienced by other companies because the GroupWise e-mail client is not susceptible to the same kinds of viruses as Microsoft Outlook, which is used by most of the business world. The address book implemented in GroupWise is different from the one used in Outlook, so those viruses which are designed to propogate by sending themselves to everyone in your address book do not function in GroupWise. This does not mean that we are immune to these viruses.
Most viruses perform two functions.
The first is to spread themselves to other computers. The second is perform some malicious act on the infected computer. GroupWise may not be conducive to the spread of these viruses, but that does not protect us from their attempts to ruin your computer. That's where our anti-virus software comes in. F-Protect is a good product, and I update it weekly so that it can recognize the newest viruses.