Nothing much to do with NCN, but a bunch of you have tried to be helpful by
forwarding e-mail messages with virus warnings to everybody you know, so I
figured I better say a couple of words about it before you waste too much
of your time worrying about it and forwarding it.
Most virus warnings you get in e-mail are hoaxes. Particularly the messages
that warn you that will get viruses in e-mail.
The most recent one is about a "Penpal Greetings!" message. It is a hoax.
There has been no known occurrance of a "Penpal Greetings!" virus.
Another well-known hoax is the warning about the "Good Times" virus. It
doesn't exist.
The only thing that's sort of a "virus" about this kind of message is the
warning itself. It will be copied again and again and again by well-meaning
users and will survive for years, no matter how false the information is.
No danger in that, but it is wasting millions of people's time.
There is no known method for a virus to spread in regular e-mail. A virus
can only affect your computer if you run a program that is infected by a
virus. So, if somebody you don't know sends you a program attached to an
e-mail message, it might contain a virus. It would only be activated if you
run that program.
Another possibility is with word processing documents or spreadsheets that
contain macros (little programs built into the file). Word or Excel files
might have such macros, and they might also act as viruses if you open the
file in Word or Excel. Again, nothing happens if you don't do that. Just
reading the e-mail message poses no danger.
Generally speaking, the chances of picking up viruses on the Internet are
very small. Downloading programs from some of the main shareware program
archives or from a software vendor is normally very safe, as they check
everything on their disks very thoroughly, and any problem would be
discovered very quickly.
Most viruses spread when you exchange floppy disks with your friends.
Having a virus detection and disinfection program on your computer can
alert you to that and remove the virus. Incidentally, the most wide-spread
viruses are not likely to destroy your data, but might affect the operation
of your computer.
Here are some links for further study:
http://www.datafellows.com/v-descs/penpal.htm
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
http://csrc.ncsl.nist.gov/virus/
- Flemming
o o
/ \------------------ Flemming A. Funch ------------------/ \
/ * \ World Transformation/New Civilization/Whole Systems / * \
/ * * \ ffunch@newciv.org / * * \
o-------o----------- http://www.worldtrans.org/ ----------o-------o
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