I Know It’s True, I Read It On The Internet
Posted on November 30, 2006
Lessons from the last 24 hours - part 2
Have you ever gotten an e-mail from a well meaning friend saying things like:
- I checked snopes.com and this is for real
- Get this sent around to your contacts ASAP…we don’t need this spreading around
- You should be alert over the next days, this is the worst virus ever
- This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the ZeroSector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept
- If you receive an e-mail with an attachment called shut down your computer immediately
There’s a lot of variations on this type of scam, but once you see it a few times, it’s easy to identify. I received an e-mail this week from a well meaning friend and it was forwarded from someone else and I was one of many that it was addressed to in this round. The first line said “I checked snopes.com and this is for real” Man, talk about scary! Snopes is a great site and it’s a place to go to confirm urban legends such as this.
Since I’m not one to take things at face value, I went straight to Snopes.com just so I could see for myself that this was a real threat. Guess what? I found the exact e-mail that I had just received and quickly saw that it is a hoax.
I responded to my friend and all of her friends, some I knew and some I did not, and this is what my reply said:
Snopes actually confirms this is a hoax. (see here) This is a fairly common email, and there are many different variations. What caught my attention is when it mentioned ‘the zero sector’ on the hard drive, that in itself, is non-existent.
- A good rule of thumb is to not even open an email from someone you don’t know and only open an attachment from someone you know, if they tell you in the email or otherwise that they are sending you a file.
- It’s acceptable to reply back to your friend, the sender, and ask if they attached a file and if so, what it is, just to be sure.
- If you send an attachment to someone, be sure to state in your email that there is an attachment named –whatever– and maybe state it’s purpose.
It is dangerous to blindly open any attachment. Snopes is a great resource to confirm this kind of thing. Here’s a good article about these kind of emails, also.
I just thought I would let you all know.
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So be wise on this kind of thing and be informed before blindly forwarding anything.
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