Virus Warning...

[The Miller]

I've just received this by email, don't know how much truth there is in it, but just in case I thought everyone would like to know about it.

 

Subject: Fw: VIRUS WARNING

 

 

 

 

 

Hi All, I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus!

 

 

 

I checked snopes.com, and it is for real!!

 

 

 

Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP.

 

 

 

PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!

 

 

 

You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD,' regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send this e-mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.

 

If you receive a mail called' POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it.! Shut down your computer immediately.

 

This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus.

 

 

This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept.

 

 

 

COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF

[e912]

no it doesnt cos it doesnt exist. neither does olympic torch which this hoax sounds like as well see the website below for more info

 

http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp

[steadiman]

Dont panic Mr Mainwaring........

[JoeP]

Nope, this is a hoax.

 

The wording is almost identical to any number of similar hoaxes done over recent years.

 

Whenever I get anything like this I simply post a chunk of text in to Google and see what happens...

 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22It+has+been+classified+by+Microsoft+as+the+most+destructive+%22&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

 

These sorts of hoaxes are pretty common, and it's sad that the hoaxers take advantage of people's good will in this way.

[simonj]

Here's the dead giveaway that this is yet another hoax:

 

COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS

 

Having worked in the IT support environment for many years it is incredibly frustrating (for me anyway) that people continually fall for these hoax emails. Even the ruddy police fell for the Strawberry Meths one the other day

 

As Joe says, just copy a large chunk of the text into Google and see how many hits it generates

[pattricia]

Here's the dead giveaway that this is yet another hoax:

 

COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS

 

Having worked in the IT support environment for many years it is incredibly frustrating (for me anyway) that people continually fall for these hoax emails. Even the ruddy police fell for the Strawberry Meths one the other day

 

As Joe says, just copy a large chunk of the text into Google and see how many hits it generates

 

Yes, but who sends them in the first place ?

[simonj]

Yes, but who sends them in the first place ?

 

 

Some enlightenment:

 

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/why-hoaxes.html

[pattricia]

Some enlightenment:

 

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/why-hoaxes.html

 

Thanks simon, I always wondered about that.

[simonj]

These hoax emails probably do seem harmless to most people but speaking from an IT admin point of view there are some knock on effects. Here is a copy and paste of part of a post I made on another 'hoax' thread some months ago:

 

At work on Friday I got the 'protest at the fuel prices by boycotting Esso and BP garages and buy your fuel at supermarkets' email. Only problem was that the guy forwarding it (thus contravening the company email policy) did so with it attached as a word document coming in at nearly 500kb AND sent it to the whole company address list (400+ people), thereby wasting around 200Mb of valuable storage space on the email server!!

 

Before I could intervene (I'm the company IT guy) at least a half a dozen people then forwarded it onto their own departmental address lists (they never thought to look at the original address list).

 

This was the result of one person recieving one email and forwarding it on. If only 5 percent of the employees decided to forward on each hoax email they received then that increases the wasted storage space by (insert figure here- far too late to do the maths)