Virus Information: Hoaxes, Legends and Myths

Hoaxes, myths and urban legends take advantage of peoples' fear of the unknown. Although they are relatively harmless, they do take up valuable bandwidth and potentially could bring an email server to a crawl if enough people forwarded them. For this reason, you should always be suspicious of email that claims to warn you of the latest virus that threatens the safety and security of the western world.

Anti-virus companies do not send out warnings in email unless you have subscribed to their list. Other companies almost NEVER send public warnings. If a company, anti-virus or otherwise, really feels the public needs to know about a threat, they will post it on their web site and schedule a press conference to announce the threat. You should ALWAYS be able to verify the information if it is legitimate.

It's not hard to learn how to spot hoaxes and legends. They ALL have several things in common:

• They use alarmist rhetoric, like "WARNING!! Dangerous virus!!"
• They make liberal use of caps and punctuation.
• They are often sprinkled with poor grammar and spelling.
• They usually invoke a great name, like "Microsoft said.." or "According to AOL...".
• They usually claim damage that is impossible to achieve, like "destroys your hard drive" or "burns up your computer".
• They always urge you to forward the message to "all your friends" or "everybody you know".
• They never provide documentation or URLs where you can verify what they say.

There are a number of sites on the Internet that are dedicated to dispelling hoaxes, myths and legends. Some specialize in virus hoaxes, others in urban legends. The first place to check is the anti-virus vendors. They all keep track of virus hoaxes at least.

Here is a concise list of links to sites that track hoaxes, legends and myths:

• Computer Virus Myths
• Don't Spread that Hoax!
• FCC (Federal Communications Commission) No Per Minute Charges
• F-Prot - Hoax warnings
• McAfee.com - Virus Hoaxes
• Symantec's Hoax Warnings
• The AFU & Urban Legends Archive
• The Mining Company Hoax Site
• The Urban Legends Reference Pages

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