Hoaxes

[Ginny Barnett <barnett@chesapeake.tokheim.com>]

Poster: Ginny Barnett <barnett@chesapeake.tokheim.com>



"WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!" 

"There is a computer virus going around that's going to melt your monitor! 
It's also going to change your dog into a zombie!  It can do this even if you
don't receive this email message!  It can do this even if you don't have a
computer!  It can do this even if you don't have a dog!  BUT, if you're the
137,489th person to receive this email, you will receive a 50-foot yacht, a
billion dollars, and a pair of bunny bedroom slippers.  To avoid the virus and
increase your chances for the yacht, you must send this message to everyone
you
know.  Oh, heck, send it to everyone you don't know, too!  Three times each!" 

We've probably all received messages warning us about the latest computer
virus, or begging for our help to send a message to some sick little kid, or
promising a prize for doing nothing more than forwarding a message.  All of us
want to protect our financial investments in our computers, help a sick child,
and get something free.  And all of us want to help our friends do the same. 

Unfortunately, almost all of the warnings, pleas for help, and promises are
hoaxes.  If we send the messages to everyone we know, we perpetuate the hoaxes
and clog the internet.  Do the math -- if you send a message to 10 people, and
they send it to 10 people, and this is repeated a total of only 9 times, a
billion messages have been sent! 

The good news is that we can help stop the hoax from spreading.  If  we
check a
couple of sites on the internet, we can find out which messages are real and
which are hoaxes.  All of the warnings I've received in the last 3 or 4 years,
except for 2, have been hoaxes; and all of those hoaxes, except for one, were
documented at the following sites: 

<http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html>http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHo
axes.html 
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACChainLetters.html 

These addresses are for the Computer Incident Advisory Committee (CIAC), a
group within the U.S. Department of Energy.  Their job is to confirm computer
viruses warnings that are being sent around by email.  To do that, they
have to
find out which warnings are real and which are hoaxes.  They similarly track
down email chain letters.

The below databases list known viruses and are useful for determining
whether a
virus warning is a hoax or a real warning about an actual virus:

http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACVirusDatabase.html
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/
http://vil.mcafee.com/villib/alpha.asp

So, the next time you get a warning, plea, or promise, check it out with the
CIAC.  If it's a hoax, send a short reply to the person who sent you the
message, and give them the addresses above.    If the warning is real,
such as
the "Happy99.exe" warning many of us recently received, just add a note before
you forward the warning, stating which of the pages listed above you found it
on (Symantec and Mcafee, both).

The more people who look up the messages before sending them on, the fewer
messages that will tie up the Internet.




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