This morning a co-worker received a “virus warning” email in her inbox. After reading the email the individual decided that the email warning seemed legitimate enough and decided to pass along the information. Instead of passing it to her I.T. department to get the information validated she decided to email it to all of the employee’s in the company via a private corporate employee list.

This was really not a good idea on her part. The fact is that she passed along invalid information without verifying it and now all of those employees are going to do the same. The cycle really never ends. The best an I.T. department can do is help educate their employees with some email tips that help avoid this in the future. Attached is the original email the employee passed on and My reply.

Original Email:

This sounds very serious. I checked it out on Snopes, and the link below is correct. However, the message below doesn’t show the true lengths these virus-makers go to. Their subjects don’t always use the word Postcard. Sometimes it’s a “greeting card” or other seeminly inocuous subject. It would a good idea to read the actual snopes page on it. Unfortunately, you can’t cut and paste from that page, or I’d have done so. Dave

Subject: Fw: VIRUS ALERT!!! THIS IS NOT A JOKE!

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp
This is real. The FBI is even involved.

Hi All,I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this
virus! I checked snopes.com, and it is for real!! Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP. PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!
You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled “POSTCARD,” regardless of who sent it to you
It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which ‘burns’ the whole hard disc C of
your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail address in his/her contact list.
This is the reason why you need to send this e-mailto all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it. If you receive a mail called” POSTCARD,” even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it.!
Shut down your computer immediately. This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus.
This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept. COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US.

CLICK BELOW TO VERIFY THE EXPLANATION ON SNOPES WEBSITE

http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp

My Reply:

To All:

The information below is bogus and should be ignored. The contents of the email are almost an exact duplicate of a known hoax warning email that has been passed around the internet since 2006. The only difference is that the link to the Snopes website have changed and that a few key words have been changed in the email. The information is 100% bogus.

The link on the email is legit. It does link to a known virus, however that virus has been out since June of 2007 and would be caught by any half decent anti-virus program available today. So again there is no threat here.

As always here are a few good rules to follow when dealing with your email:
1) Never open an attachment to an email unless you know who the email is from. Even then be wary about opening them if the contents of the email do not look legitimate.
2) Never open any attachments whose file name ends in the following: .exe, .vbs, .cs, .ws
3) Never click on website addresses from an email unless you can verify whom the email is from.
4) Never click on a website address in a email that links to your bank, the IRS, your Ebay account, or PayPal. If you think it might be real then go open a web browser and type in the address to the site yourself. 99.99% chance the link in the email doesn’t actually go to your bank.. just a page that looks like your banks website.
5) To help avoid some older, less effective, virus attacks you shouldn’t use the reading pane in your email client. The reading pane opens emails in a side bar when you single click or highlight the email in your email client. This means that if your just clicking on the email to delete it the client will still open it in the reading pane. You should turn off that pane so you can click on a email to delete it without having to open the email to read it.

Following the rules above will help reduce your chances of getting a virus via a email. They will also help keep you from falling for the recently popular bank fraud scams that are floating around as well.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the days of the email virus are rapidly disappearing. There hasn’t been a good effective email virus since 2004. There have been many attempts since then however security advances in anti-virus software, Windows and email clients such as Outlook have slowed them tremendously. The most effective computing threat today is identity theft via banking , Ebay and PayPal emails.

Finally, Please do not pass around bogus emails such as the one below. Don’t send them to your friends, co-workers, acquaintances or anyone else. Send them to your I.T. department to get them verified instead of sending them out to others. Any I.T. department will be happy to verify the validity of these so called “virus warning” emails and if it is legitimate they will notify the employee’s of a possible threat. The internet is full of invalid information and all internet users tend to get enough spam emails without us contributing to junk in their inbox.

The fact is that any chuckle head on the planet can go to a web host such as <Removed>, yeah that’s a shameless plug, and setup a website full of bogus information. The trick is weeding through all the junk to get the information that really matters.

Thanks,
Your I.T. Department

P.S. If you need something to pass around the internet.. Send a copy of this email. It contains something useful and not fluffy bunnies or cute kittens.

The fact is that what the employee did was not horribly wrong. It’s just that a whole chain of emails can be avoided if the employee followed the advice above. Use the email computing tips in my reply and help avoid causing the same kind of problem at your work place.

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