Folks, we live in the land of lies.  A lot of the e-mails you get are just pure rubbish, and can be disregarded/deleted without any further ado.  These bogus messages come in three varieties:

• Virus hoaxes

• Urban legends

• Scams

In the nearly eight years I've been online, I've gotten maybe 10 (ten) e-mails about viruses that turned out to be true.  All the rest (and that numbers in the hundreds) have turned out to be "boy crying wolf" false alarms.

Telltale signs of a virus hoax e-mail:

- It comes from anyone other than an antivirus company.  (Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, Panda, Sophos, F-Secure, etc.)

- IT'S TYPED IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, WITH A LOT OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!

- It says that Microsoft/AOL/Earthlink/CNN/CBS/ABC/The Cartoon Channel "just discovered this yesterday, and it's the worst virus ever found."  News flash, people:  these organizations do NOT publicize virus threats by sending e-mails to John Q. Public who then forwards it to Jane Q. Public etc. etc.  If any of these organizations have a virus concern, you'll hear about it on the evening news.

- It tells you to "send this to everyone in your address book."

Exception:  I have gotten a very few e-mails in the past, that warned about viruses, that were originally written by the IT person at a large corporation, hospital, or university.  These e-mails were then forwarded to contacts, and re-forwarded.  E-mails such as this can usually be trusted.  But they're in the minority by far!
 

• Places you can check online, to see if a particular virus warning is a hoax or not:

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html

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

http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/hoax/

http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/hoaxes/

http://vmyths.com/hoax.cfm?id=15&page=1&cat=Hoax%20virus%20alerts

http://antivirus.about.com/library/blenhoax.htm
 
 

Most everyone has gotten an urban legend.  The story about the fellow who woke up in a bathtub full of ice and found his kidneys gone, or the Bill Gates e-mail tracker that woukld give you a free trip to Disney World, or the AIDS-infected syringes people were leaving in movie seats.

DON'T FORWARD THESE THINGS, FOLKS!  They're complete wastes of time -- yours and that of your recipients.

If you get something that sounds or looks just too incredible to be true, most of the time it is.

• Check it out at:

http://www.snopes.com/

http://urbanlegends.about.com/

http://www.urbanlegends.com/

http://HoaxBusters.ciac.org/
 
 

These are just what they sound like.  The most prevalent one around these days is what's known as the 419 scam, named after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes.  (These things originated from Nigeria.)  A 419 letter tells you that some high-sounding official from a foreign country has some exorbitant amount of money they want to move out of the country, and they need your help.

Don't believe it.  People have fallen for these things, have flown overseas, and have actually been murdered in these schemes.  More at

http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.shtml

Another favorite scheme these days is known as "phishing."  A crook sends you an e-mail that looks very official, just like one you might receive from your bank.  They want you to "verify your account information."  DON'T DO IT.  Your bank already has that information!  This is a come-on to get you to divulge your credit card number/account number/password/etc. to a ne'er-do-well, who will then use that information to rob you blind.

A revealing article about phishing scams, "Phishing E-mails Jump 800-fold In Six Months", is at

http://www.securitypipeline.com/news/18902562

Another article discussing a Gartner Group study on phishing is at

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/cybercrime/story/0,10801,92948,00.html

If you have any question about such e-mails that might show up in your inbox, telephone your financial institution to verify before giving out any information online.

As with any urban legend, you can check these things out at the Urban Legends links above, and at the Anti-Phishing Working Group's web site, http://www.antiphishing.org/.

Or use any regular search engine; I like Google ( http://www.google.com/ ) and
Google News ( http://news.google.com/ )
 
 

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