The Olympic Torch virus hoax
May 8 2006
We work in a world where end-users increasingly
are involved in influencing their IT organizations. What fascinates
me is how often-times, these end-users are just smart enough to be dangerous.
Today's example is the e-mail I just received from my father. The
subject was "This is important". The contents said that
there is a new e-mail virus out called "olympic torch", which
is distributed via e-mail messages with the subject "Invitation".
The e-mail even says that "[T]his is the worst virus announced
by CNN". Funny, I hadn't heard of it before.
What gave away the hoax was the sentence that then said "This virus
was discovered by McAfee yesterday". I know I'm behind in my
reading, but I figured that if the "worst virus" was discovered
yesterday, I would have heard about it by now.
A quick google search reveals that snopes
and
others
have entries that debunk the hoax. Of course, I don't have the time
to trace back all the people who were on the forward w/history on the e-mail
my dad sent, but there are a lot of people who are now suspicious of their
e-mails...even if their organizations have virus checkers on their mail
systems. Unfortunate.
A good reminder that IT professionals are professionals for a reason.
This will be useful for a customer meeting I have tomorrow.
(ps--no offense to Dad, he's just trying to be helpful :-).
Post a Comment
- 2
Craig Wiseman | 5/8/2006 5:04:21 PM
[<a href="{ Link } size="3" face="Georgia">\nTruthiness</font></a>] is more important than the truth....
- 3
Craig Wiseman | 5/8/2006 5:06:15 PM
{ Link }
It's more important for it to SEEM true than to be true...
- 4
Craig Wiseman | 5/8/2006 5:07:04 PM
(third try - I'm having a bad day)
{ Link }
It's more important for it to SEEM true than to be true...
- 5
Keith Brooks www.keithbrooks.com | 5/8/2006 5:29:45 PM
And here I thought this was about the little flame icon for flame emails :-)
- 6
Chris Linfoot http://chris-linfoot.com | 5/9/2006 6:35:53 AM
Spotted this one in Feb when one of my users forwarded a copy to me (and only me as per my standing instruction).
{ Link }
@5 - Keith - Have you noticed that many people seem to use the flame icon (do they still call them mood stamps?) when they actually mean that the message is urgent and not angry which is what a flame is meant to signify?
- 7
Roberto Boccadoro | 5/9/2006 8:12:14 AM
@6 - Yes, thse are still called mood stamps and I do agree with you. I see this behaviour very often, then when you explain they understand. Guess is a problem with American slang, flame does not translates to "reprimend" or "angry" here in Europe so the visual meaning is maybe lost and people think it is a good description of urgent.
RoB
- 8
Keith Brooks www.keithbrooks.com | 5/9/2006 3:42:13 PM
yes, I noticed the difference in US and EMEA thinking on the mood stamp. I think we should be able to embed our own graphics for these, but then I also thought the icon for a mailbox should accept jpg or bmp.
Maybe we can get Fedex to give us an icon to use for rush/express :-)
Any hannover people reading this?
I've informed all my family and friends that all Virus warnings are strictly a one way street from me to them.