Disclaimer: This page gives advice about how to treat your email. Tony Aiuto is not responsible for the accuracy of any material presented here, now is responsible for any damage caused by following this advice. The master copy of this page is located at http://tony.aiu.to/info/virus.html
If you have an email account, you inevitably receive mail which is really just a hoax. Most of this is about some virus or another contained in some email floating around the net. They warn you of the extreme danger in reading this mail - that you will loose everything in your computer or that your computer will be destroyed.
The truth is, in 999 out of 1000 cases, the virus is the mail itself. It is a rumor started by some joker who wants to see how widely their prank can spread around the net. The ultimate goal is to see if they can get news coverage about "this dangerous virus" that does not exist.
Unfortunately, this is actually a big resource drain. This stuff wastes your time, and many people pay for the download time for this junk.
Another favorite prank is the "Billy is an 8 year old with cancer" chain letter. This presents a heartwrenching story about a sick child, and then asks you to send mail to him, or to forward the letter to everyone you know. If you see these, do not send mail to the address listed. It is often really a bulk emailer collecting names to send junk mail to, or it is simply someone who is being set up to be carpet bombed by the prankster. You can almost here their little minds working - "Billy Bob was a real jerk today. Let's see if we can get 100,000 people to send him email. That should make his day!"
Most hoaxes have some easy to distinguish traits.
They also tend to make claims that are really easy to identify as false. If you use AOL as your service provider, and the mail says "AOL has said this is a very dangerous virus", then why didn't you get an email warning from AOL, and why isn't anything posted about it on their main page?
Usually, they come from well meaning friends. That does not mean they are true, just that your friend might have been duped. If they come from the computer system's administrator at work, then you should presume they are true.
Life would be much simpler if every warning about a virus was really a hoax. Unfortunately, some things you get in the mail can be dangerous. Although the mail message itself is not really dangerous, you can see serious destruction from mail containing attachments which are executable programs or Microsoft Office documents. Programs, of course, can do anything they want on your computer. While it seems that a document cannot do any harm, they actually can. Microsoft has added scripting (macro) features to Word documents so that they can do almost anything a real program can. This makes it easy for them to write some of their software, but is dangerously vulnerable to abuse.
Usually you can tell what attachments to avoid by looking at the file extension - the three or for letters after the period (.) at the end of the file name.
These file types should be safe
Watch out for these file types.
You should also consider the source of the mail.
If you get any of the dangerous file types in a mail from someone you don't know, you should be extremely cautious. It may be a real virus.
Of course, just because mail comes from a friend does not mean you can always trust it. The recent "Mellisa" virus used the Microsoft scripting problem to look in your address book and send itself out to 50 or so people you know. If you see a file type that could be dangerous, even from a friend, you should think twice. Ask yourself some questions:
"Really funny, you've got to open this"
is suspicious because it does not describe the content at all, but tells you to do something.
If you have any doubts about what you receive, send mail back to whoever sent it to you and ask what it is.
As a final precaution, don't use Microsoft Outlook as your email reader. There are several virus strains about that can infect you just by looking at the mail if you are using anything but the very latest version of Outlook. If you did not download a new version of Outlook from the Microsoft web site after July 15, 2000, then you have an unsafe copy.
When you get virus warnings in the mail you should not
immediately forward them to everyone you know.
Check out the source. Look to see if it makes sense.
Ask your system administrator. Ask a friend who might know.
If you think it is a hoax, you should mail a message back to whomever
sent it to you telling them to read this page.
Of course, you might conclude it is a real threat. If you do, then go ahead and let people know.
I see so many more, but it's not really my highest priority to transfer them here.
In a message dated 99-06-07 16:43:20 EDT, PNNUT 796 writes: Abercrombie & Fitch have recently merged to form the largest hottie outfitter company in the world! In an effort to remain at pace with this giant, the GAP has introduced a new email tracking system to determine who has the most loyal followers. This email is a beta test of the new clothing ....