Email Hoaxes
Greeting Everyone,
Tis the season to send your friends and family emails. You probably have more than you can read along with a few emails from people you don’t even know. Some of the ones that I always receive are forwarded emails that someone wants me to check out because the information in it is so scary. Here is an example of one that was sent to me last month 11/2009.
Subject: READ IMMEDIATELY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HI ALL THIS was sent to me by our son who is in charge of the computers for the state of Florida whenever he receives anything like this it is a warning to the State as well as all us little people.
VERY IMPORTANT , PLEASE READ THIS
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 an apparently harmless e-mail titled ‘Mail Server Report’ If you open either 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.
Did you count how many things are wrong with this warning? Fortunately, this email threat is a bunch of junk. Not only that, it’s very old junk which has been around since 2002. Snopes has only confirmed that it is as you might have guessed….junk. The best thing we all can do is not forward virus hoaxes unless they have credible sources. Usually emails like this one will not have any sources, such as the actual person who is in charge of “the computers for the state of Florida” and that is because there is no person in charge of all the computers for the state of Florida. Also, look for bad spelling and grammar.
So, if you want to read more about this hoax it I’ll provide some actual links to real sites, including snopes.com.
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/lifeisbeautiful.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_is_beautiful_virus_hoax
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_life_is_beautiful.htm
Get a decent anti-virus program on your computer, even a free one like free AVG and keep it updated. Lets not make the silly people that make up this hoax stuff any happier.
For the record, I am a computer networking expert with a MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) credential along with 2 decades of computer experience in technical support and software. I use to live in Florida and never met the person in charge of all the computers there.
Van Kirchhoff
MCSE, CompTIA A+, Novell CNS
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