Hoaxes and Urban Myths

From time to time, you will get in your mailbox a message that appears to be very important. It will purport to come from some senior official of a company. It will concern a very lethal computer virus that is being spread about the internet. It will urge you to spread the message to your friends to warn them.

Almost without exception, such messages are a form of SPAM. You should never ever pass these messages on, and especially not to mailing-lists, unless you have thoroughly checked the validity of the message. You can do this by checking the webpage at
http://www.datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm


The site carries full details of all known hoaxes.

An account of some of the more amusing (if they weren't so annoying) hoax messages can be found at
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html

But a word of real warning

You cannot introduce a virus on to your computer simply by opening an email. You can only get a virus through running (i.e. executing) an infected program. Such programs will carry either a .com, .exe or .zip extension to their filename. Only if you receive such a file as an attachment to an email, or download such a file from a website, or copy one from a disc and then run (execute) the file, are you at risk. So if you get a file you didn't ask for from someone you don't know, then exercise due caution. If in doubt, just delete it.
IBM have their own page on which they post information about real virus threats. It can be found at
http://www.av.ibm.com/BreakingNews/VirusAlert/

---

A scare for Americans!

An interesting hoax seen recently is a letter that says

> >> Congress will be voting in less than two weeks. CNN stated that the
> >> Government would in two weeks time decide to allow or not allow
> >> A CHARGE TO YOUR PHONE BILL EQUAL TO A LONG DISTANCE
> >> CALL *EACH TIME* YOU ACCESS THE INTERNET

Quite apart from the absurd notion of the US Government moving so swiftly on such a matter, the fact that this idea seems to horrify internet users in the USA, to the extent that many quite sane people have passed on this message, will amuse a lot of non-Americans. A large number of people actually do now face just such equivalent charges.

Feedback and suggestions will be welcome.
Send all comments by email to netmiser@cryogen.com

Last updated: 3rd May 1999.