hoax

PLEASE
Don't distribute my email address!

The following is something I am concerned about and I hope you understand what it is.

When forwarding a Virus Warning, Chain Letter or Hoax, all the e-mail addresses are forwarded and displayed with the e-mail. I have received these e-mails with over 100 different e-mail addresses. I have started getting all kinds of unsolicited e-mail from persons and businesses that I do not know. I use the delete button. Please do not include my e-mail address in any future Virus Warnings or Chain Letters.

Thank you and have a nice day.
Erwin E. Hayer

PS: Following are some URL locations to check for Viruses, Hoaxes and chain letters. Just click on the URL address to open.

HOAXBUSTERS.

A public service of the CIAC Team and the U. S. Department of Energy. Interspersed among the junk mail and spam that fills our Internet e-mail boxes are dire warnings about devastating new viruses, Trojans that eat the heart out of your system, and malicious software that can steal the computer right off your desk. Added to that are messages about free money, children in trouble, and other items designed to grab you and get you to forward the message to everyone you know. Most all of these messages are hoaxes or chain letters. While hoaxes do not automatically infect systems like a virus or Trojan, they are still time consuming and costly to remove from all the systems where they exist. Ref: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org .

SYMANTEC SECURITY RESPONSE HOAXES.

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: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html .

SYMANTEC SECURITY RESPONSE.

List of Virus Threats and Security Advisories. http://securityresponse.symantec.com

HOAX WARNINGS.

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. Do not forward hoax messages. You can search here:

http://www.f-secure.com/hoaxes/hoax_index.shtml and here: http://www.f-secure.com/hoaxes/hoax_new.shtml

Specific budweiser frogs hoax urls, which are as follows:

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/buddylst.zip.html
http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=10579&

HOW TO SEND A 'PRIVATE' GROUP MESSAGE.

By Cheryl Leff, (Published July 26, 2001) in the Sacramento Bee. http://www.sacbee.com/ib/news/old/ib_news04_20010726.html

Q: How can I send a party invitation to a whole group of people without everyone's names being visible to everyone else?
A: Send the invitation as a blind carbon copy (bcc). It's more cumbersome than setting up an invitation list as a group, then selecting the group as the recipient in the "To" field, but it is more private. To do this, create the text of the invitation, then click on the Address Book icon next to the Bcc window. Select or type in the addresses of all the people you wish to invite, then send the message. The header accompanying the message will show only "To: Undisclosed recipient." None of the recipients will be able to see who else was invited. (Then again, you could invite a group of people who would actually be happy to see each other. It would probably make for a more congenial party!)

MORE TIPS ON 'PRIVATE' GROUP MESSAGES

By Cheryl Leff, (Published Aug. 2, 2001) http://www.sacbee.com/ib/news/old/ib_news07_20010802.html

In last week's column, I suggested sending an e-mail party invitation to a list of recipients entered in the "Bcc" field in order to prevent recipients from seeing each other's names. Here are a couple of additional tips I received from readers.

Thanks to Gene Schrepel, secretary of the Crosswoods Computer Club, for the following: As secretary for a computer club, I often send e-mail messages to our entire membership. In order to maintain privacy for our e-mail addresses, I have created a group as you mentioned. I send the message to myself as the recipient in the "To" field and then select the group as a blind carbon copy (bcc). My address then shows in both the "To" and "From" fields, but no indication of the many other recipients.

Here's an additional tip from Jerry and Darlene Weiss: Here is a little thing we do to make things more friendly. In the "To" box, enter HELLO-THERE@NOTICE.com (or something similar), then put all the recipients in the "Bcc" box. This is friendlier than "Undisclosed Recipient." Naturally, since there is no such e-mail address, we get an "Unable to Deliver" message -- but who cares?

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