[gui-talk] checking virus news or hoax

Sat Jan 31 13:46:20 UTC 2009

Albert,

I do all that. I wasn't worried for the sake of my safety. I was simply 
asking where the snopes site was, I mean, I was trying to recall what it was 
called, so that I could introduce it to a 13-year-old friend who, not 
surprisingly, finally received her first email virus warning that had gone 
from group email list to group email list and wound up arriving at her group 
of friends' addresses. So I went to Snopes and read the whole story of how 
this started out as a partially true warning about 2 1/2 years ago, got 
augmented over time with the message looking more and more amateurish at 
every step (quote Microsoft says" and "there's no defense against this virus 
and never will be" and a few other such dead-giveaway gems.

Then I emailed her the link to the page with the story, right from the page 
using IE7's Files menu. Then I called her on the phone and explained she 
should bookmark the site and that it will make her ten times as 
sophisticated and intelligently skeptical about this stuff as anyone who has 
passed the message on to her.

I emphasized that viruses and other such malware aren't nonexistent 
semicolon in fact, they're more present today than even a year or two ago, 
by a dramatic factor. But I then explained that having an efficient  virus 
filter working at your email provider's site left paren Yahoo mail for her 
right paren , having a security firewall left paren she uses the same 
hardware router as I do, installed by the same I T professional guy right 
paren and knowing how to be careful about unexpected file attachment even 
from friends' whose systems may have been borrowed by a bot is how to live 
with this, and that email  circulating warnings are nearly always worthless.

So you see, it was an educational job I was doing, given the right 
opportunity, and it's just that I forgot the name Snopes. I simply haven't 
had to consult it, myself, for a long time, and it finally drifted out of 
memory, as I find things like proper names, street names and so forth do 
after not left quote reading right quote them for too long. I've forgotten 
most of the street names in my own neighborhood x number of years after 
having stopped seeing their signs, first while driving by them, later while 
walking past. Except the ones just bordering my block to the immediate 
north, south, east and west. Interesting connection regarding memory storage 
and circuitry. Yes, of course I can deliberately memorize things if I 
determine I ought to. But that approach has now become such a deliberate 
exercise that deciding to do it has to have a clear need and purpose for me, 
where the reinforcement once was simply automatic even if i weren't always 
looking directly at the word or phrase on purpose but it passed within my 
general view with any frequency.

But that's about me and my curiosity about the neurological connections 
between vision and memory retention.

Hope that's clear. Sorry if I inadvertently made it seem as if I were 
calling for help about an issue that I already suspected so strongly to be 
bogus that I wouldn't likely have given it a second thought if it hadn't 
seemed to present a good teaching opportunity.

Joel
reae gone fom inroduce rhw amy
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "albert griffith" <albertgriffith at sbcglobal.net>
To: "'NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List'" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2009 4:58 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] checking virus news or hoax

I just allow the professionals to do their jobs and trust they'll keep my
virus program up to date.  I also maintain my firewall and use a little
common sense when deciding which attachments to open. It helps to know you
can open any attachment if you've first saved it to your computer and your
antivirus program is up to date. I used to track these threats down to find
they were hoaxes most of the time.  It was fun because Snopes is a great
site to play around with.

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 9:31 PM
To: GUI-Talk
Subject: [gui-talk] checking virus news or hoax

I completely forgot where it was I used to go to look up information about a

virus warning I'd receive that was circulating in email, most of which turn
out to be unfounded no matter how many real virus threats there are every
day online. As many of you know, most of the warnings are hoaxes, which just

complicates it all.

now, I thought the place I used to go was kasparsky.com, and I could swear
that's how it was spelled, by when I type that into my IE address bar I'm
given something that sounds similar but is spelled differently. Also having
to do with spyware and antivirus software, but I never heard of it.

So then I typed urbanlegends.com into the address bar, because that was the
original site I used to go, and I think they were absorbed into Kasparsky or

something.

Well, that just gives me a Web page with links to stuff about ghosts and
vampires.

I give up. Where does an informed person go to check out a virus warning? I
think I'm having memory lapses or something.

thanks for the help.

Oh, for anyone who's curious, the warning I just received from a friend said

that the virus has just been released last Saturday, that it was in the
email message itself (don't click open the message," it said, and that the
subject line  e of the email is, let me look again, okay. Mail server
report. Note I didn't say it was a file attachment. it's just an email, and
this is what it's called, as the warning says. Which already sounds bogus,
because if someone knowledgeable and serious had composed that warning, it
would say that the *subject line* said whatever. And it would probably
mention that this was a pretty innovative virus because it was designed to
activate just by having the email opened. Boy, would that be rare, as far as

I know.

Also, it says that there is no defense against it. Not that software
security people are still working on it. No. It has no solution at all.
That, too, is an odd and suspicious thing to say.

Anyway, the subject line is supposed to be mail server report.

Now where do I go to look into this?

thanks.
got to thgere ewmail ewmail emial opened.deignwas oiaxy,hoazy, messagbeeen
viyou antivisu idn't palcompicdates turne

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