Do not forward virus hoaxes!

We’ve all seen them. Most hoaxes are started as a joke, but then they get passed on to gullible users, who in turn spread them even further thinking that they are doing their friends and family a favor by spreading the *warning*. The majority of warnings you get via email are fake and deleting them is the best course of action. But if you receive a virus warning from someone via email, and you don’t want to delete it, do us all a favor and check it against these three sites before passing it on.

Symantec Hoax Alerts: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
Symantec Security Response uncovers hoaxes on a regular basis. These hoaxes usually arrive in the form of an email. Please disregard the hoax emails – they contain bogus warnings usually intent only on frightening or misleading users. The best course of action is to merely delete these hoax emails. Please refer to this page whenever you receive what appears to be a bogus message regarding a new virus, or promotion that sounds too good to be true.

F-Secure Hoax Warnings: http://www.f-secure.com/virus-info/hoax/
This page is considered the industry standard information source for new virus hoaxes and false alerts. Hoax warnings are typically scare alerts started by malicious people – and passed on by innocent users who think they are helping the community by spreading the warning.

McAfee.com Virus Info: http://home.mcafee.com/virusinfo/
Find out which viruses are infecting PCs in your neighborhood and around the world.

All it takes is a little critical thinking to put an end to the hoax spam we all receive. If anyone along the way checks it out and finds out it’s false the chain breaks and the spam stops.

Hope this helps,

Erik