[gui-talk] important alert.
Joel Deutsch
jdeutsch at dslextreme.com
Tue Mar 3 21:28:16 UTC 2009
I agree with everything Steve says, and I wouldn't have bothered with Snopes
myself because 1. he's right about the warning signals that something may
well be bogus and 2. because a warning almost identical to this one in its
wording got forwarded to a young middle school friend of mine who's
inexperienced in stuff like this, and she passed it on to me as well as to
other friends. So that time, instead of asking her to trust me about why the
warning was probably worthless, I checked it out myself at Snopes and then
sent her the Snopes URL so she could see for herself not only this specific
information but a resource to which she could turn when such things came to
her in the future. So now she's the virus hoax guru of her 7th grade class,
I guess. How cool is that.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Jacobson" <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
To: "NAPUB Mailing List" <napub at nfbnet.org>; "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List"
<gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] important alert.
I'd like to add to what Joel advises here. Usually you don't need to even
go to Snopes but only check for a couple of things to figure out if a
warning is real or not.
If a warning tells you to "send it to everyone you know," you should be
suspicious. Most reasonable people would trust you to know to whom you
should send such
a warning.
When generic terms like "this morning" without day or date are used, it
should strike you that this could have been written three years ago and
would still sound just
as urgent. There should be a specific date given.
If it mentions companies without any contact names, again be suspicious.
In this case, if it says "norton" instead of Symantec, the company that
produces it, that should be a pretty good sign that somebody is misleading
you.
Finally, the important thing isn't who forwarded it to any of us, but
whether we can tell who wrote the original note. We have all forwarded
things like this when we
were starting out so the person who forwarded this to Ken is probably very
reliable. If you don't know the name of the person who wrote the original
note, though, be
suspicious. There is always some point where the forward list stops so you
can't tell who wrote the note and they never claim credit in the body of the
note. The
forwarder may be reliable, but the original author is into hiding and
thinking about the millions of copies of his or here warning are going all
over the world.
Definitely check with Snopes or something before forwarding warnings as Joel
suggests, but if any of the above are true, I don't even bother with that
any longer.
Best regards,
Steve Jacobson
On Tue, 3 Mar 2009 11:35:11 -0800, Joel Deutsch wrote:
>Hi,
>before freaking out about this supposed current virus threat, it would be
>informative to read the information about it at Snopes.com, which
>investigates, explains and evaluates such warnings. This one originated in
>the fall of 2006, and much about it is interesting to read. here's the URL
>of the Snopes page about this virus warning. if the link takes up two lines
>in your eamail, as it does in mine, first note where the line break is,
>then
>copy and paste the entire URL into your browser's address bar, but then
>look
>for the place where the line break was and make sure there's no space there
>to break up the URL, by deleting a space if you find one.
> http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=mail+server+report&sp-a=00062d45-sp00000000&sp-advanced=1&sp-p=all&sp-w-control=1&sp-w=alike&sp-date-range=-1
&sp-x=any&sp-c=100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0----- Original Message -----From:
<Kenlawrence124 at aol.com>To: <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>Cc: <napub at nfbnet.org>Sent:
Tuesday, March 03, 2009 10:46 AMSubject: [gui-talk] important alert.Hi list
members I can confirm that what I'm posting below is real and thesorce is
credible This
was forwarded to me by a music contact please payattention. >
URGENT> >> >> > THIS IS VERY SERIOUS, PLEASE SENDTO EVERYONE ON YOUR>
E-MAIL LIST!!> >> > 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.> >
AOLhas already confirmed the seve rity, 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.> >> >
_http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp_(http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp)Block
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