Security
Email Hoaxes
Included in the junk e-mail that fills our e-mail boxes are dire warnings about terrible new viruses, Trojans that corrupt your system, and worms that can wipe out your hard drive. You'll also often come across urgent messages about terminally ill children, charities in trouble, pyramid schemes, and other items designed to grab your attention. Most all of these messages are hoaxes or chain letters. While hoaxes do not automatically infect systems like a virus or Trojan, they are still time consuming and costly to remove from all the systems where they exist.
Please do not spread chain letters and hoaxes to everyone you know. Sending a copy of a cute message to one or two friends is not a big deal, but sending an unconfirmed warning or plea to everyone you know with the request that they also send it to everyone they know simply adds to the clutter already filling our mailboxes.
How do you know if the e-mail you just received is a hoax?
When you receive a warning or a chain e-mail:
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Check at anti-virus and hoax sites to see if the warning or chain e-mail has already been declared a hoax.
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You may also check the website of the company that produces the product that is supposed to contain a virus. (For example, check Microsoft for warnings about Microsoft products.)
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If you do not find any information at these sites, this particular hoax may not yet have been reported.
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Don't automatically forward warnings and chain e-mails. The request to "send this to everyone you know" or some variant of that statement should raise a red flag that the warning is probably a hoax.
For further information on email hoaxes please refer to: