Did you hear about the lady at Neiman Marcus who loved the chocolate
chip cookies, and asked for the recipe,
and was told it was "two-fifty" so she said fine, and on her monthly
charge statement was a $250 charge?
If you open an e-mail with the topic "Join The Crew" it will wipe out
your hard drive, according to a variety of
experts.
My uncle has a friend at the University of Texas who met a girl at a
bar, and she slipped him a mickey. He woke
up in a hotel room in agonizing pain, on a bloody sheet, with a sloppy
suture on his left side. He called 911 (a
copy of the tape is available as a wav file on the net for proof),
was rushed to the ER, and was told that his
kidney had been stolen! No Joke!
The American Cancer Society (a reputable organization) will get a 50
cent donation for each copy of a fund
raising request forwarded over the Internet.
Bill Gates is spending $1 million to promote Windows 98 via e-mail.
He will personally send you $1000 free, if
you are among the first 1000 to pass on his e-mail request, or a free
copy of Win 98 if you are after the first
thousand senders.
Never open a returned e-mail message, as it might contain a virus which will certainly wipe out your computer.
If you are one of the millions who use ICQ software, if you send a prepared
message to 35 of your friends, you
will get free ICQ service for life, otherwise you will have to pay
for each message sent. Also, if you do not
forward a specific ICQ message within the next 48 hours, your access
will be revoked.
E-mail the FCC right away and protest the modem tax, or you will have
to pay the local and long distance
companies a fee to continue your Internet use. Likewise, the US Government
is implementing a tax on each
e-mail message sent, to reimburse it for revenue lost by the post office.
Never respond to a Penpal request, or you will for sure corrupt your files.
If someone calls you on your home phone from the phone company, and asks you
to type a #90 on your touch-tone
phone, don't do it, or they will make long distance calls charged to
your phone!
Gerber Baby Food company lost a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit.
If you have a child born since 1986,
simply send a certified copy of the birth certificate and social security
card to the company, and they will send
you a $500 US Savings bond as your share of a price fixing settlement.
Craig Sherrold is dying of cancer, and wants to be in the Guinness Book
of Records, so send him business
cards, post cards, baseball cards, or baseball caps.
Was your Internet connection lost, or did you have trouble connecting
to popular web sites starting March 1,
1998. That is because on February 29, 1998, at 12:01 am Zulu, Internet
was shut down for several hours for a
cleaning, to remove all of the extraneous files and data fragments
floating around the net. If you were connected
to the net at midnight (GMT) on February 29, and did not have your
entire hard drive erased you were very lucky
that the cleaning "spider" did not find your computer.
We computer users are too sharp and sophisticated to fall for a classical
April Fool's joke, yet we want to be
helpful, and prevent our friends and family from being harmed by some
insidious plot, or we want to pass along
a good deed or great deal to our friends. Despite "our" best intentions,
"we" just became a victim.
These, and a multitude of other warnings, deals, offers, and other such
misinformation abound on the net. The
only problem is that all of the above are FALSE, and fall into the
preview of hoaxes and urban legends.
Can a computer user really catch a virus simply by reading an e-mail,
or other "innocent" activities? According
to Rob Rosenberger, on
his excellent page http://kumite.com/myths/myths/
there have been ZERO known e-mail virii, HTML virii (caught by simply
connecting to a web site), Java or Javascript virii, ActiveX virii, virii
infecting a
computer's CMOS, BIOS, or video RAM. Despite excellent documentation
to the contrary, posts still appear in
news groups, and e-mail messages alleging that "you" can catch a virus
that way. There is anecdotal
"evidence" that one of the aforementioned virii "killed my computer
- I know it, because my monitor went up in
smoke, and I know I did not have a power surge or lightening strike.
I just read an e-mail, and it happened. It had to be an e-mail virus that
did it!" To quote the Oscar Mayer commercial, B-O-L-O-G-N-A (baloney -
there is a
more appropriate expression, but this is a family publication).
For additional documentation that Email based virii are nearly impossible, the site
"The Truth About Computer Email Viruses" at http://www.gerlitz.com/virushoax/
has a detailed explanation of why email based viruses are are a hoax, summed up with,
"There is *NO* such thing as an E-mail text virus!! .
As a matter of personal credibility, always check out any claims or
warnings before passing them on; in fact, an
almost dead giveaway of a hoax is the "pass it on" request.
Hoaxes and urban legends are easy to check out. Such services as Yahoo
have entire directories of reputable
sites that carry the latest news of hoaxes and urban legends. Check
out the Yahoo
directory at
http://www.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Mythology_and_Folklore/Urban_Legends/
and find the truth
yourself before forwarding such posts. An alternative is to use one
of the popular search engines such as
Lycos, Excite, Dogpile, Dejavue, or Altavista, and search for the virus,
claim or allegation made in the post.
There are some exceptionally good sites on the net warning about hoaxes.
One of the best sites is "CIAC
Internet Hoaxes"
at http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
A companion site warns about "Internet Chain Letters" at http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACChainLetters.html
"Computer Virus Myths (and hoaxes
and urban legends)" has a very good home page
http://www.kumite.com/myths/
.
Their alphabetical list of almost all known hoaxes, and urban legends
is at http://kumite.com/myths/myths/ .
Other great pages are "Urban Legends"
at http://www.snopes.com/ and "Don't
Spread that HOAX" at
http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/hoax.html .
Another site with a variety of urban legends is URBAN LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE by the Mining Company at http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/ . They have a list of some of the more common legends floating around at http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blhoax.htm, and some of the more bizarre and unusual ones at http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/blbyolix.htm . Their library of Urban Legend links is at http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/mlibrary.htm.
The International Computer Security Association, a leading provider of computer security services has a site listing "Alerts And Hoaxes" information at http://www.ncsa.com/services/consortia/anti-virus/alerthoax.html.
An online magazine, INTERNET SCAM BUSTERS , recently published an article on some of the better soundin online hoaxes.
You can read the full text of the article at http://www.scambusters.org/Scambusters22.html .
Internet users can get a FREE online subscription at the INTERNET SCAM BUSTERS WEBSITE, http://www.scambusters.org .
Almost all of the anti-virus software publishers have sections about
popular hoaxes. Datafellows, publisher of
the popular F-PROT anti virus software has an excellent page kept up
to date with the latest new about hoaxes
at http://www.datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm.
Norton Antivirus has a frequently updated list of hoaxes on its site
at
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
McAfee's hoax site is at http://www.nai.com/services/support/hoax/hoax.asp .
Many ISPs have sections of their web sites set up to help their subscribers
deal with hoaxes. A good example
is at http://www.mci.com/aboutus/company/corporate/consumer/hoaxes.shtml
.
Mirabilis, the publisher of ICQ, has a webpage listing related rumors,
hoaxes and chain letters at
http://www.icq.com/urge.html
. Other good ICQ related hoax pages are at
http://home.powertech.no/bjornar/hackers/
and http://members.xoom.com/DiamondB/icqlies.html
Before forwarding any message that is either a warning, or sounds too
good to be true, think about it first. We
all take pride in our credibility, and that is what makes us believable
to others. Do not risk your credibility by
simply passing on whatever happens to be posted on the net. Some people
lie, period. Some get their jollies by getting others to react to a good
sounding hoax; don't fall for it. A nefarious individual might also use
a hoax to
letter bomb a target, putting a server out of commission, or possibly
use a hoax for criminal activities, as has
been alleged by some with the "Gerber $500 Bond" hoax (the criminal
allegations of identity theft might be a
hoax about a hoax!).
Follow good "netiquette" and check out any allegations or claims before
reacting to the senders' requests. This
will help make the net better for all of us.
There is a Virus Bulletin website at http://www.virusbtn.com/ . It contains the latest virus news, as well as and comparisons of the anti virus software.
Ira Wilsker is an Instructor
at Lamar University Institute
of Technology, and a police officer. He has been teaching internet
classes for several years at the Institute, as well as for federal, state,
and local law enforcement agencies and fire departments around the US.
He currently has over 60 websites in operation, the main one being LAW
ENFORCEMENT SITES ON THE WEB.