Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!debri From: debri@dds.nl (DEnnis Brinkhuis) Newsgroups: control,scee.yaroze.event,scee.yaroze.freetalk.english,scee.yaroze.mydemos,scee.yaroze.problems.internet,scee.yaroze.profile Subject: Re: Virus Alert Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 11:21:30 +0200 Organization: DEbri Lines: 39 Message-ID: <1dwy10i.9dr8a07643qsN@[194.151.88.143]> References: <7pgtck$htr15@chuka.playstation.co.uk> <37BC3257.C04D2C69@easynet.co.uk> <37BCA356.A2CCB813@breathemail.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 194.151.88.143 X-Newsreader: MacSOUP 2.3 Xref: chuka.playstation.co.uk control:198 scee.yaroze.event:167 scee.yaroze.freetalk.english:4528 scee.yaroze.mydemos:507 scee.yaroze.problems.internet:93 scee.yaroze.profile:182 Al wrote: > The only Virus warnings I believe are the ones at www.symantec.com, or > www.mcaffee.com etc :) > > The funny thing is is that they have pages devoted to hoax viruses > because of this! > > Think about it, wouldn't an email with subject "warning virus" be a > really good way to spread a virus? > i know you were just trying to be helpful and considerate but at the end > of the day emails like this are just a pain and waste of bandwidth. > > Here my Mac comes in handy, there are less virusses on Mac in total than the amount of virusses that are discovered on a PC in one week. I must say that I can remember a story (maybe even legend) of a couple of students that did an investigation. They wanted to know how effective it would be to warn people overt the internet. So they made up this dummy-message with an virus allert about a non-exciting virus. In the mail there was a question to warn all your palls for this virus. The outcome of the test was that they had created one of the worst virusses that ever hit the internet. Everybody was sending the message on and on.. Complete servers completely got blocked and the whole internet was over-worked. Lot's of servers crashed.. No virus-killer was able to fix this. It was like almost all the mail-adresses got bombmails.. From that moment on, servers were better protected for this type of overload. I still get now and then one off these messages from this test, that was done over 8 years ago. And for anybody longer then 2 years on the internet, you must have had one of these as well.. It's about a mail you are not alowed to open (not even an attachment). DEnnis..