Looks Like We Need Hoax Help With Facebook |
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Some Email Hoax Notes |
If it says you will receive money for forwarding it,
it's a hoax. |
Here Is A Hoax Fix For Worms, Sounds Good But Will Not Work Folks!! |
There is a message traveling around advising people that they should add an entry called "wormalert@somewhere.com" to their address book and give it the name "AAAAAA". This (so the rumour goes) will allow them to detect when they get a virus, because the virus will send mail to that address first, they'll get the bounce, and then they'll know that they have a virus and can stop it. The message sometimes even claims the bogus address will somehow "stop" the virus from spreading. This is a hoax, it does not work. In fact, the wormalert address receives hundreds of viruses every day--all from people who put it in their address book because they thought it would protect them. 1. If a virus has infected your computer, it's too late. Even if you did see the bounce, the virus has already had time to send to everyone in your address book and fully infect your computer. Time to run a virus disinfectant if you are lucky, restore from backups if you are not. 2. Most viruses don't scan your address book in alphabetical order. 3. A false address is not going to keep a virus from sending messages to every other address. There are two kinds of "bad" addresses. An address may be malformed or it may refer to an account that doesn't exist. A virus will ignore the first kind, and the second kind will eventually send back an error message which you may or may not read. Neither will stop a virus, and the bounce may not show up for hours or days. 4. Most viruses forge the from address (the Klez virus sets it to the address of someone else in your address book). You may well have had people complain that you sent them a virus when you didn't--that's why. But this means that the virus may not bounce back to you, the error message may go to someone else in your address book along with a copy of the virus. What you are seeing is the creation of a computer superstition. It's not surprising, the internet doesn't come with a manual--there's no good way for you to know what is real and what is not. But putting wormalert in your address book is right up there with using garlic cloves to ward off the plague. And like most superstitions, it's making people ignore the *real* way to combat the problem. False beliefs can be dangerous. There is absolutely no substitute for anti-virus software. If you run Windows, run anti-virus software. And you *absolutely* must update the virus definitions every week. Not once a year, not once a month. Once a week. If you're paranoid about this (I am), update it once a night. I'd recommend software that automatically updates. Some anti-virus companies are only now making versions that do this for dialup users--check and see if yours does. If you don't want the hassle of running anti-virus software and constantly checking for virus updates and application updates, I strongly suggest you go buy a Mac. It's not a panacea, but it's a lot easier to manage and there are a *lot* less viruses. I get about 70,000 email messages every year, along with more than 2000 attachments. In 13 years of using a Mac I've been infected by *one* virus, ten years ago. In 20 years of using Unix (e.g. Linux) computers I've had none. The only recent viruses I've received that *could* have infected my computers were Microsoft Word viruses--and those got caught by the anti-virus software. That's not to say I don't run Windows either--but I don't read mail on Windows machines, and I don't put them directly on the internet, it's just not worth the hassle. So, either use a platform that virus writers don't target, or run anti-virus software and keep all of your software up-to-date. |