I noticed this thread yesterday, and went about reading up about it in more detail for a good few hours. I'm not into hacking, nor can I hack, but security issues are important to me, and I spotted something which really annoyed me.. let me explain...

It's said that you can open you're old emails through .dbx and .pst files if you know where to look for them right? I know where they are anyway, as I regularly back them up so I've always got another copy of my inbox if my HD ever goes down. Anyway, isn't there a potential security risk here? I know what to look for when I get sent an email that contains a virus, and most of the time I can spot them and take care of them, but for example, lets say someone receives an email with a virus attached in outlook express, but they dont realise its a virus, or they plain dont know... a back up of their inbox is created to these .dbx and .pst files correct? So eventually they realise they've got a virus, find out where it is, and quarantine it with their AV program.

But, if microsoft are hiding these files, they wont show up on a virus scan? So even though you've got rid of the email from your inbox, and done another virus check, it may appear that you haven't got any infected files, but infact there are infected files sitting right there in those hidden files?

Do you see what I'm getting at? Its hard to explain, but if you see where I'm coming from you can see how this poses a big question about the threat of virii on any computer running Windows.