OT - Just got this in my email (from someone I know)

Hi Gem!

Luckily enogh it's a hoax :-)

Anna Maria

Anything that says "Please forward this to everyone you know" is a hoax. If everybody followed that advice, it would be worse than a virus because it would swamp every mail server in the world.

How many people do you have in your email address book? Suppose you got this warning from every one of them? Multiply that by all the email addresses in the world and you'll see what it could cause.

People who tell you to forward things to everybody you know, and to tell them to also pass it on, are usually up to no good.

Thank you for the heads-up on this Barbara. Actually the lady who sent it to me was very likely fooled by whoever sent it to her... she isn't the type to be up to no good like that. Like I said, I wasn't sure if it was real or not, which is why I posted it in the newsgroup for everyone to look at here... I figured someone would know if it was real or not.

Gemini

Thank you, Anna Maria! I will add that urbanlegends site to my favorites so I can check on things from now on. ;o)

As long as you have an up-to-date virus checker... you shouldn't concern yourself, and always always ignore those forwarded e-mails. They're pretty much always bogus.

Shelagh

Thank you Gemini - as Anna maria said " luckily it is a hoax" however my golden rule is that I never open anything from any one if I do not know them, or if I feell the subject line does not reflect the person sending it.. Maybe I miss an e mail or two - though I have never noticed - but that is just too bad. God Bless Gwen

The "please forward" and "let's see how many friends you have" emails are started to grab email addresses as they are forwarded. No matter how nice or well meaning the email sounds, the original intent is to get as many addresses as possible for the spammers. Passing them along plays right into their hands. If a message is one you feel compelled to send on, send it to one person at a time, or use BCC (blind carbon copy) if you want to avoid falling into the trap.

BB

Actually I don't see how they could use this kind of chain email to capture email addresses, because there's no copy going back to the originators. Web pages that ask you to forward themselves to lots of people may be trying to capture email addresses, though.

I didn't mean to imply that the person who sent it to you was up to no good. I meant that the person who first started the hoax on its merry way, hoping that everybody would send it to everybody they know.

My daughter's sister-in-law often sends me these pass-it-on virus warnings, and she really sends them to everybody in her address book. Funny she didn't send me this one. Maybe she hasn't read her email in a while.

Some are very sophisticated, though, and appear to be from people you really know. Years ago, when I had a different computer and was living in the US, I opened an email from a coworker at the university. It was a malicious email that she had accidentally forwarded to everybody in her address book. I realized almost immediately what was happening (it was going through my address book and forwarding itself) and shut my computer down abruptly by hitting the off button. It only got as far as the B's in my address book. However, one of the names it pulled out of the address book, which starts with a "B", is still being used more than 10 years later to try to fool me into opening malicious emails. Whenever I see an email that seems to be from that person, I have to check the headers before opening it. Sometimes I get emails addressing me as that person, for example, "Dear Ban______", we have a wonderful surprise for you!"

I use Mailwasher, a free program that lets me inspect emails before downloading them from the server to my computer. It also flags probable spam, but lots of programs do that now. What I like is the ability to see the headers and read a few lines of the email before downloading it. Once I've deleted all the spam and viruses, I use my normal email program to download the rest.

Yes, I have received a few of these "you could have a miracle happen" or "this will bring you luck and money" emails within the last couple of days... I deleted them and emailed the person who sent them asking them not to send this type of thing to me anymore, because they are chain letter types and I don't like them.

I have definitely been using BCC for everything that I do send out to more than one person, as I REALLY hate getting emails that have a gazillion email addresses on them (not that I have that many addresses to send to... but I don't want to share their addresses with everyone anyway).

And... a few weeks ago, I wanted to send something to a few friends that had a picture on it and couldn't do it properly... so Matthew showed me that there is a way of doing it from Yahoo. Click on the arrow on the "Forward" button and choose "As Inline Text", then you can delete all the other email addresses (and any other garbage on there) that came along with it... and just send the original message with the pictures on it. So, you learn something new everyday... or I do anyway... it's likely something most of you already knew about! ;o)

Gemini

Oh no, I didn't think you had implied that my friend was up to no good. :o)

Gemini

Mailwasher is indeed a wonderful program, but hang on to it. It's no longer free. I went to their site recently to see if there were any updates and got the surprise of my life. (shrug). Doesn't matter much to me, the version I have works just fine.

Shelagh

just put the name of the virus into google along with virus hoax and it'll put up McFee's and all sorts of info on it. hugz Cher

Some also have websites for you to go to read about them, DON'T go, it just enables the site to keep going by the amount of 'hits' it gets, there was one about a kitten in a jar once...elaborate hoax of course.. hugz cher

yes that is true also, cos alot of them have automatic return to their own email addy's attached which you know nothing about...I no longer forward anything that says pass this along, even the things like well wishes and the like or it means that potential idiots and spammers get a hold of your email and goodness knows how many others...hugz cher

I think it first got going under another name back in 2000 just had it's name altered abit to go out again...they keep doing the rounds..lol Cheers...cher

I believe they can, if an innocent looking email can have what we call a ''back door virus'' attachment to them, whereby the receivers see's no paper clip, and an apparently looking safe email, but one which sends out this email to everyone in your addy' book, including returning it to the sender, then I am sure they have cracked a way of getting this info back to themselves. it's just a small prog after all.

By the way, some of you have your emails open for you, my advise is Don't...i just get the headers in, so that I have to double click on it to open it, Outlook Express has a thing in tool box called...layout...go in there and make sure the pre-view pane is not open if it is, the minute you click on an email to delete it even, it is too late as it has opened automatically. Also no, one particular antivirus checker can catch them all, I have three running, since I had a back door virus on my old pc which wiped out the hard drive, even after eventually formatting it and getting it running again, it was never the same, kept faltering and shutting down on it's own, and opening things I didn't even know about...I used McFee and AVG then and none of them found it. now I use three including antispam and mailwasher and go in once a month and have an online scan to make sure...i don't want that nonsense again. In the end I took out the hard drive and put in a new one and gave it to a g/daughter who doesn't use the internet and it is doing fine now..still a bit slow but with the new hd it is tons better.

These things drive ya nuts.

Thank you, Cher! That sure seems simple enough to do!

I also went googling yesterday morning before getting off the computer for the day and found a few virus hoax websites to add to my favorites so I can check out things coming into my email that I'm unsure of. So I have a few options now! ;o)