Internet Hoaxes and
More
My Rant for the Day
7/11/99 Leighton Siegel LSiegel005@gmail.com
I have been the recipient of an unending series of:
1) Fake computer virus notifications.
2) Phony warnings about a wide variety of issues.
3) Scam chain emails.
These hoaxes seem to be endlessly floating around cyberspace. If you are lucky enough never to have received one of them just be patient. If you have received one did you pass it along others? Did you become aware, at a later time, that it was a hoax? Perhaps you passed some of these along to others and still think they were real.
Two hoaxes arrived in my email within the past month and
another resurfaces from time to time.
1) The earlier hoax email one was a warning about a computer virus that
you could get just by reading an email whose subject was, "Good
Times". You can't get a computer virus by just reading an email.
2) The latest hoax email was about a (non-existent) bill in
congress whose subject was "E-MAIL SURCHARGE". It claimed that the
U.S. Postal Service was attempting to levy a 5-cent surcharge on every email
delivered within the United States for alternate postage. It urged you to write
your congressman.
3) Variants of the "Bill Gates hoax" chain email arrive from
time to time. Many of them are very believable and some are not. One crude
version claimed to be from Microsoft Corp. You were to send a reply email
with your credit card number and expiration date to qualified for a $1,000
prize. You were also required to send copies of the chain email to others in
order to qualify. Amazingly enough the only one receiving a prize is the person
to whom you send your credit card number. He promptly charges purchases to
you.
YOU CAN READ ABOUT INTERNET HOAXES AND COMPUTER VIRUS MYTHS AT THESE EXCELLENT WEB SITES:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
Here is a clue for you:
Any email that starts with something like, "THIS IS VERY SERIOUS!!",
or "THIS IS FOR REAL", and later tells you to "SEND THIS WARNING
TO AS MANY OTHERS AS POSSIBLE" is going to be a hoax.
That's my rant. Leighton
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