Viruses on X

[TheMacintoshLady]

Good morning all,

I am hoping the answer to this question is a resounding NO.
Can OS X be infected by these .pif, .exe, or .scr files that are sent by 
PC users?

The reason I ask is, usually when sent this type of thing, my Emailer on 
OS 9 takes it all in as text, allowing me to see the name of the file and 
whose machine it came from. I just notify the person if I know them, and 
then dump the mail.

If I save the mail message as a text file, run it through a decoder, I 
usually end up with an innocent .jpg and the "untitled" icon-less 
document which when examined with BBEdit Lite, contains the virus which 
"can not be run in DOS mode". That confirms it was a virus AFAIC.

Today I happened to run the mail.app on X and my cousin's machine is 
still spewing. I got a simple mail with the title "Let's be friends" 
which of course told me it was a virus right away.....because even if she 
purposely had sent me the graphic, I know she would not have titled it 
like that.

But when I opened the mail, the lovely September 11 graphic was sitting 
there as pretty as you can imagine, but the .pif file was no where to be 
found.

Should I be worried and start searching for it? I can easily see its name 
if I look at the same mail which I just downloaded onto this machine.

As I said these are .pif, .scr, and .exe files which are PC programs.

And she keeps telling me she updated and ran her virus checker, but gosh, 
she, and the whole rest of my PC using family save for three of us, is 
most definitely still infected.
...J