New Virus Warning - hoax

[chrisbow]

VERY IMPORTANT WARNING !!!!!!


Please Be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived this morning from Microsoft and Norton. Please send it to everybody you know who accesses the Internet.



You may receive an apparently harmless ! email with a Power Point presentation " Life is beautiful. pps". If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES , and delete it immediately.



if you open this file, a message will appe! ar on your screen saying: " It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful",



subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC and the person who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.



This is a new virus ! which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon





WE NEED TO DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO STOP THIS VIRUS.



AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the antivirus Software's are not capable of destroying it.



The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself " life owner". PLEASE MAKE A COPY OF THIS EMAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS and PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY



Chris

 

[~shelley~]

Thanx for letting us know - i dont understand what people get out of doing things like this!!

 

[ValencianNails]

http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBMalCode.shtml#beautiful

it's a hoax, has been around for a little while.

the following is from this website... http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_life_is_beautiful.htm

Comments: This is a hoax, first spotted circulating via email in January 2002. The original message was in Portuguese, with subsequent variants into English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Chinese.

Antivirus software vendor Symantec recommends the following: "Symantec Security Response encourages you to ignore any messages regarding this hoax. It is harmless and is intended only to cause unwarranted concern."

 

[Seanny]

Guys, this is the kind of crap that loads up email inboxs un-necessarily. These hoaxs are designed to disrupt the normal run of things in much the same way as a real virus. If we just keep forwarding them on, the hoaxer will be more than satisfied, and will be totally happy with a job well done.


If you receive something like this from a well intentioned friend, do the smart thing and check it out first BEFORE posting about it in these forums. There's a great link posted by Valencian Nails for hoax checking. You can also find something similar at Symantec's site http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html

 

[chrisbow]

Sorry for posting in on here, I thought it was genuine and wanted to let people know. Apologies again

Chris

 

[geeg]

Don't worry Chris ... I did the same thing last year, thinking I was being helpful, and I think it was Seanny who put me right that time too!! :o

 

[Lellipop]

Dont worry Chris we have all done it, If unsure if hoaxs or not just check out.
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

 

[Seanny]

Chris, dont sweat it, my response wasnt at you in particular, it was aimed at everyone and anyone who responds to these hoax emails, and yes like Lellipop says we've all done it. So that's why I'm suggesting that today we stop the rot, at least in Geek.
I appreciate that it's very easy to forget where those hoax sites are, especially if these hoax emails only come round every so often. Here's a simple solution that will work for everyone. Create a new folder in your 'Favorites' and name it HOAX. Next visit each of the sites listed below and one at a time, save each one to your favourites folder. Then, when you receive your next (suspect) hoax email in 2 or 3 months time, you'll know where to look first so that you can check it out yourself.

http://www.breakthechain.org/
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBMalCode.shtml#beautiful
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
http://www.snopes.com/
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

If you get an email telling you that you absolutely must forward this on to all your friends and let them know about some impending catastrophe, suspect a hoax virus..... have a brief look at the email and see is there any text that is used as a phrase or a filename. For example, I just entered 'life is beautiful.pps' into Google and the first few results show that this email is more than likely a hoax. You can then go and check with the aforementioned sites to verify same, once you're satisfied you then simply delete the email.


HTH

 

[chrisbow]

Thanks for that Seanny, I have done as you suggested and added them to a folder in my favourites.

 

[Seanny]

Nice one Chris. :biggrin:

If you come across any suspect emails that you cant find on those sites but you're still concerned about them, feel free to PM me and I'll see if I can help.

 

[smiler13334]

Sorry for posting in on here, I thought it was genuine and wanted to let people know. Apologies again

Chris

The same thing happened to me also a few months back. Its lovely that you are worried about the geeks and at least now we can check these things out.

The sad thing is a year ago I did get one of those viruses and Id lost everything and id only a few weeks before got the hard drive fixed so I was very ****** off.

Always have your anti virus check things your unsure of before opening them.

I now make sure my norton is up to date etc. Thanks again or being thoughtfull XX