Alicorn's Virus Information

Alicorn's Virus Information

This page used to be much longer, when warnings about "email viruses" ran rampant around the internet. I don't get those warnings anymore... perhaps they've finally died. I hope so. I still do get emails that end with "forward this to all your friends" so there is still a need for this page. Read on....

You receive an email that tells you something amazing/shocking/horrifying/etc and at the end it says for you to forward this to all of your friends to make sure they are aware of whatever-it-is.

IT IS NOT TRUE! I don't care what the email was. If it says "forward to all of your friends" -- DON'T! I've never seen one that said that, and the contents of the email were true. They're all lies, hoaxes, jokes, whatever.

Why do I care if you forward it? Consider this: a virus is an object that spreads, causing harm. Your friend who sent you the warning probably didn't just warn you. He sent that message to everyone he knows who has email. Imagine he knows 20 people, and none of them are aware of this hoax, and they all fall for it, too. They each send the message to 20 of their friends. 20*20 plus the original 21 friends - now there are 421 people who believe this baloney. Those 400 people email 20 of their friends... that's 8000 more people informed for a total of 8421 concerned people.

Now there is a real problem. That first message wasn't all that short. Let's call it 1 kilobyte just to make the math a little bit easier. As it gets passed along, the header junk increases anyway, so 1 kb is close enough. 8421 people have that message. No one thought to delete it, because they wanted to remember how important whatever is. 8421*1 kb is 8421 kb, and the next generation increases that to 168421 people (or kb).

Generation	# of People	Total affected
1	1	1
2	20	21
3	400	421
4	8000	8421
5	160000	168421

This is where the "harmless" little email message becomes a virus in itself, of a sort. All those email messages take up a lot of space, and they can cause email servers to fill up. If you've ever filled up the hard drive on your computer, you know that it starts to run a lot slower. It's possible it might even cause the server to crash, although it would have to be very full for that to happen, I hope!

Your mission! When you get a message telling you all about the terrible new virus that transmits itself through email, or the new way people are being abducted, scammed, robbed, or about the sick child, or any of a zillion similar messages, respond to all recipients and tell them to read this web page (http://geocities.datacellar.net/Paris/9507/virus.html), and then to delete both the warning and your message. Then you delete both messages. If you've already passed on a message to all your friends telling them about a virus, send a chaser note telling them you were misinformed, then tell them about this web page, and tell them to delete both messages. (Detect a trend?) Once everyone is aware these are hoaxes and all the messages have been deleted, our server space will be safer!

Be aware that chain letters are illegal on many systems, and by passing them on, your ISP may cancel your account.

Don't just take my word for it. Check out the following websites:

Snopes: Inboxer Rebellion
International Computer Security Association: hoaxes.
Computer Incident Advisory Panel: Hoaxbusters
Network Associates Services: hoaxes

If you have any questions, contact me or your local system administrator.