Hoax
From time to time there are virus alerts which turn out to be false alarms. Several of these are rumors saying that by opening an e-mail with a particular subject you are infected. Some also states that by opening a particular attachment to an e-mail infects your PC.
Quite many such virus hoaxes or myths exist. Among the most famous are The Irina virus, The Deeyenda virus, Good Times, Win a holiday, The California virus (aka Wobbler) and so on.
Even Norman has been mentioned in an email hoax.
Such a myth may say that if you open an email with e.g. the subject "Good Times" your PC's files will be deleted.
Email programs can be used to send attachments to an email message. Such attachments may be binary files (program files) or documents. By opening such an attachment without checking for virus by an updated virus control program, you are at the same risk as if you run any program or open any document without virus checking. This is in fact one of the most common ways to be infected by a malicious program.
You should always use an updated version of Norman's antivirus products to check the file before running the attachment.
Virus hoaxes often have these characteristics:
- Several exclamation marks in the Subject field.
- A lot of exclamation marks and capital letters in the body of the email.
- Claims that the message originated from a well-known company (IBM, Microsoft etc.), thereby trying to make the message more reliable.
- Warnings that you should not open an email with a special subject or an attachment with a special name.
- It urges you to forward the email immediately to friends, colleagues and business associates to warn these.
For a more complete explanation and list of virus hoaxes, see www.vmyths.org (opens in a separate browser window).