I receive a lot of emails from friends and acquaintances that warn me of viruses and such. One of the famous is the Budweiser Frog screensaver virus that is a hoax and now there are some that give you instructions of how to remove a virus from your system. Be very leery of making changes or deleting files from your system unless you are talking to an expert (and there are very few of them around) because the virus authors and hoax perpetrators are sitting back and laughing at the panic they produce. They are electronic terrorists causing havoc with our computers. Check out a virus or warning on the sites listed below before making any changes in your system.
Another group of hoaxes that are prevalent are the ones telling you to forward emails to everyone to get paid by Bill Gates or M&M or Outback Steak House and so on. These are all hoaxes as there is no way to track email and those guys sure are not going to give you any money or send you free certificates for steak dinners. As a general rule, all of these forwarding schemes and virus alerts that are sent by mass email are hoaxes. Check them out before forwarding a warning or a scheme to get something for nothing. Remember if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is not true.
I know the next question is what difference does it make if I forward a scheme or other chain letter type email. It is a lot of fun and who knows I might get something one of these days and it is not costing me a thing. First it loads and slows the Internet down as well as some of the writers of those schemes are doing this for money. Have you ever noticed all the email addresses that are on these forwarded emails? Well eventually someone will take all those email addresses and put them on a list that they sell to the SPAM dealers to provide addresses to advertise their products or services or porn sites and all kinds of distasteful email. Did you ever wonder how those folks got your email address? Also when someone in the address list does get a real virus that is how it gets passed on to so many people. Just like the chain letters tell you to forward that to 10 friends and then they will forward to 10 friends, pretty soon we have a chain of email addresses linked together and you might get that virus from someone you do not even know. I am sure the only person that sends a virus on purpose is the original writer of the virus but the characteristic of all viruses is that they forward to everyone in your address list and sometimes as klez H it even looks for email addresses in the temporary pages of your Internet sites. I use web based email services like hotmail.com because they are not as susceptible to viruses and if I do get SPAMMED, I can filter it out or drop the address. I just wanted to give a few tips and hope you enjoy using your computer and communicating with friends and relatives and even business use. There are some links below to read more about hoaxes and viruses. I always go to GOOGLE and type in the name of the virus or warning such as the recent Jdbgmgr.exe file hoax. Try it next time . Good computing !
First a simple check is to enter the virus name or information on the search engine Google such as the recent sulfnbk.exe virus that asked you to check for it and remove it from your system. Fortunately it is a little used Windows file.
Read about chain emails.
A good site to check for viruses and other hoaxes is Vmyths.
Another good site is Symantec which is home of Norton Anti Virus.
Also some of the Urban Legends that you see or hear can be found at SNOPES2
Free virus check on line can be found at Trend Housecall.
Another free virus check site at Panda.
I hope these sites help.
Bobby