[gui-talk] important alert.

Tue Mar 3 21:28:16 UTC 2009

I agree with everything Steve says, and I wouldn't have bothered with Snopes 
myself because 1. he's right about the warning signals that something may 
well be bogus and 2. because a warning almost identical to this one in its 
wording got forwarded to a young middle school friend of mine who's 
inexperienced in stuff like this, and she passed it on to me as well as to 
other friends. So that time, instead of asking her to trust me about why the 
warning was probably worthless, I checked it out myself at Snopes and then 
sent her the Snopes URL so she could see for herself not only this specific 
information but a resource to which she could turn when such things came to 
her in the future. So now she's the virus hoax guru of her 7th grade class, 
I guess. How cool is that.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Jacobson" <steve.jacobson at visi.com>
To: "NAPUB Mailing List" <napub at nfbnet.org>; "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" 
<gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] important alert.

I'd like to add to what Joel advises here.  Usually you don't need to even 
go to Snopes but only check for a couple of things to figure out if a 
warning is real or not.

If a warning tells you to "send it to everyone you know," you should be 
suspicious.  Most reasonable people would trust you to know to whom you 
should send such
a warning.

When generic terms like "this morning" without day or date are used, it 
should strike you that this could have been written three years ago and 
would still sound just
as urgent.  There should be a specific date given.

If it mentions companies without any contact names, again be suspicious.

In this case, if it says "norton" instead of Symantec, the company that 
produces it, that should be a pretty good sign that somebody is misleading 
you.

Finally, the important thing isn't who forwarded it to any of us, but 
whether we can tell who wrote the original note.  We have all forwarded 
things like this when we
were starting out so the person who forwarded this to Ken is probably very 
reliable.  If you don't know the name of the person who wrote the original 
note, though, be
suspicious.  There is always some point where the forward list stops so you 
can't tell who wrote the note and they never claim credit in the body of the 
note.  The
forwarder may be reliable, but the original author is into hiding and 
thinking about the millions of copies of his or here warning are going all 
over the world.

Definitely check with Snopes or something before forwarding warnings as Joel 
suggests, but if any of the above are true, I don't even bother with that 
any longer.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Tue, 3 Mar 2009 11:35:11 -0800, Joel Deutsch wrote:

>Hi,

>before freaking out about this supposed current virus threat, it would be
>informative to read the information about it at Snopes.com, which
>investigates, explains and evaluates such warnings. This one originated in
>the fall of 2006, and much about it is interesting to read. here's the URL
>of the Snopes page about this virus warning. if the link takes up two lines
>in your eamail, as it does in mine, first note where the line break is, 
>then
>copy and paste the entire URL into your browser's address bar, but then 
>look
>for the place where the line break was and make sure there's no space there
>to break up the URL, by deleting a space if you find one.

> http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=mail+server+report&sp-a=00062d45-sp00000000&sp-advanced=1&sp-p=all&sp-w-control=1&sp-w=alike&sp-date-range=-1
&sp-x=any&sp-c=100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0----- Original Message -----From: 
<Kenlawrence124 at aol.com>To: <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>Cc: <napub at nfbnet.org>Sent:
Tuesday, March 03, 2009 10:46 AMSubject: [gui-talk] important alert.Hi list 
members I can confirm that what I'm posting below is real and thesorce is 
credible This
was forwarded to me by a music contact please payattention.          > 
URGENT> >> >> > THIS IS VERY SERIOUS, PLEASE  SENDTO EVERYONE ON YOUR>
E-MAIL LIST!!> >> >  Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo , Hotmail ,> > 
AOL and so  on.> >> > This information arrived this morning,>  > Direct from 
both
Microsoft and Norton> >> > Please send  it to everybody you know who has> > 
Access to the Internet.>  >> > You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail 
titled>
'Mail Server Report'> >> > If you open either file, a  message will appear 
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.> > 
AOLhas  already confirmed the seve rity,  and the anti> virus software's 
are> not capable
of destroying  it.> >> > The virus has been created by a hacker who  calls> 
himself> > 'life owner'.> >> >  PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL> > TO ALL
YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them  to> > PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY!> >> > THIS HAS 
BEEN  CONFIRMED BY SNOPES.> >> >
_http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp_(http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp)Block 
quote endI pledge to  participate actively
in the efforts of the national federationof the blind to  achieve equality, 
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of the federation;
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