I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. Several times over the past year, I’ve worked on computers belonging to friends who are concerned that a file whose name is ~ (that’s a plain ol’ tilde) appears on the desktop. Is it a virus? Is it spyware? Nope. It’s an Outlook Express bug.
KB article 830921 explains the symptoms: “When you edit a contact in the Outlook Express Windows Address Book (WAB), a file named ‘~’ may appear on the desktop or at another location on the hard disk such as C:\Program Files\Outlook Express.” The solution? Move the file to another location. (Don’t just delete it.)
According to the KB article, this bug is due to be fixed in an upcoming service pack.