Posting of Virus Warning Alerts

No doubt a number of members receive many "Virus Warning Alerts" via email and these are normally are along the lines of "AOL and Microsoft announced that 'Virus XXX' has just been released to the internet and it is more dangerous then Melissa but no one else knows yet, so pass it on to everyone in your address book and that it uses "Nortons Utilities or Internet Explorer to erase your hard drive"

However, these "Virus Announcements" from "IBM & AOL" are FAKES. The "Virus" is actually the message itself and it "spreads" when people forward the message on to others. The actual "virus" they mention usually DOESN'T exist. To let you know neither AOL, nor IBM, issue Anti-Virus warnings and they certainly do not release joint virus announcements.

To find out if a virus really does exist, checkout the following sites;

http://vil.nai.com/villib/alpha.asp

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

BTW: NAI/McAfee also publish Virex, which in my opinion the best virus protection for Macintosh users.

Please DO NOT re-post these messages to public forums, or even on to other people's private email address.

Besides, haven't you ever noticed that the effects are always the same "Nortons Utilities, or Internet Explorer will erase your drive etc". All that ever changes is the name of the virus! Besides if these were really as dangerous as the posts say, the major anti-virus software packages will detect these fairly quickly and I have yet to see any of the anti-virus packages say they detect or fix these (and I do read the read me's of the anti-virus updates to see just how many more Microsoft Macro/Script viruses appear each month!!!!!!)

So people, please pay heed - PLEASE DO NOT forward these reports on.

While viruses are a concern, you should pay attention to those officially reported by the REAL anti-virus sites (ie NAI/McAfee and others) and not from messages that were "forwarded from a friend, of a friend, of a friend who said..."

Meanwhile, Safe Computing!

Credits

A copy of this article, with colour images, is available from my website, http://www.nicholaspyers.com.

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© August 2001, Nicholas Pyers