While searching my c drive directories; i located the following
addresses i v.card - welcome@newman.oscar.aol.com and on another
machine - register@newmn-d1.blue.aol.com.  what are these?

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Request for Question Clarification by hummer-ga on 20 Nov 2003 04:40 PST

Hi needtoknowbasis,

I suggest you run a thorough virus scan, such as HouseCall:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Let us know how that goes -
hummer

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Clarification of Question by needtoknowbasis-ga on 29 Nov 2003 16:47 PST

Hummer; thanks for the feedback.  I have donr the virus scan as
requested.  No known Virus found.  I have done a little more work and
found that these may be related to AOL AIM - do you have any comments
regartding this possibility?

Thanks

Dear needtoknowbasis-ga;

Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to answer your interesting question.

Settle down. You?re in no danger. The addresses you mentioned are used
by AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) to set up and confirm your account when
you (or someone else) initially registered to chat. AOL uses the OSCAR
(Open System for Communication in Realtime) protocol for registrations
and logins. ?Newman? is presumably ?New Man? since this email is used
for registration and confirmation purposes.

It?s harmless. Searching for ?newman.oscar.aol.com? you will quickly
find that there are many variations of this, often with the AIM
client?s name, username or IP address appearing out front as in
?username @ newman.oscar.aol.com?.


Here are some untitled discussions about it from others who noticed
the same thing you did:

http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~b7506051/mozilla/doc/activation.html

http://www.rhyolite.com/pipermail/dcc/2002/000326.html

http://cert.uni-stuttgart.de/archive/incidents/2003/09/msg00066.html


Below you will find that I have carefully defined my search strategy
for you in the event that you need to search for more information. By
following the same type of searches that I did you may be able to
enhance the research I have provided even further. I hope you find
that that my research exceeds your expectations. If you have any
questions about my research please post a clarification request prior
to rating the answer. Otherwise, I welcome your rating and your final
comments and I look forward to working with you again in the near
future. Thank you for bringing your question to us.

Best regards;
Tutuzdad ? Google Answers Researcher


INFORMATION SOURCES

WIKIPEDIA
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSCAR_protocol



SEARCH STRATEGY


SEARCH ENGINE USED:

Google ://www.google.com


SEARCH TERMS USED:

NEWMAN.OSCAR.AOL.COM

OSCAR.AOL.COM

OSCAR PROTOCOL

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Clarification of Answer by tutuzdad-ga on 29 Nov 2003 18:24 PST

PS: This is NOT a virus.

Regards;
Tutuzdad

oscar.aol.com is definitely related to AIM.  
for examples, see http://toc.oscar.aol.com
or 
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=oscar.aol.com&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&safe=off&sa=N&tab=wg