New Virus Alert

C

Captains Cat

New member
Just got this on my business mail. Sounds serious...

VERY, VERY IMPORTANT NEWS PLEASE READ AND PASS IT ON.....




Subject: E X T R E M E L Y I M P O R T A N T!




Subject: Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on.

This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoft and Norton.

Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet.

You may receive a seemingly harmless e-mail with a Power Point presentation ' Life is Beautiful'
If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and delete it immediately.

If you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying: 'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful.'

Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.

This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software's are not capable of destroying it.

The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself 'life owner'.

PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY!

THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES ALSO!
 
Thanks Robbi. I was just about to do the same. For those who haven't yet clicked on the Snopes link, this virus alert (and many others like it) is a hoax. In this case, the "virus" is the spam and junk mail created by users who pass it on.

For those of you who get similar emails, SNOPES.com is a good place to check for various internet hoaxes. Also, there are a number of corporate and governmental sites that provide advisories on recently released viruses.
 
O.K. What's going on here?

Is the original post actually a fraud?

And how about "SNOPES"?

Paul Priest
Sequim
 
ppriest":1516q661 said:
O.K. What's going on here?

Is the original post actually a fraud?

And how about "SNOPES"?

Paul Priest
Sequim
Click to expand...

The original post is the re-conveyance of a hoax. E.g. Charlie's post was well intentioned but the email he received was a hoax. The alleged "confirmation" of the hoax by SNOPES isn't true, it's just an attempt to make the hoax look more real. SNOPES itself (see Robbi's link) points this out and SNOPES itself is pretty darn reliable.

My search of "milehog" yielded "Sorry, no matches were found containing milehog" so I haven't a clue what milehog is talking about. I've seen a lot of spam of the general form posted above. I would estimate that >95% of all the emails that admonish me to send an urgent warning out to all my friends or that inform me of some horrific thing etc are hoaxes.
 
Rodger, after you pointed out the virus was a hoax I thought I'd throw in a little tongue in cheek hoax of my own. Guess it didn't turn out like I hoped.
 
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