Postcards from the Dark Side

     The alarmists have struck again! The message: another cautionary note, fraught with elements of  both reality and creative writing, warning us of the danger from Internet postcards sent to our email boxes. Per the message, the digital postcards deliver a destructive  and catastrophic payload to the computer hard drive when opened. Lending credibility to this threat from the anonymous author, is the advice from the anonymous, very advanced, programmer from Microsoft, who does computer work for a living combined with a high status with the software giant. This unknown source is notorious for not sending email notifying recipients of a threat if they it is not for real, so lock down the hard drive and man the virtual battle stations, 'cuz this got to be real!

THE ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

FYI TO ALL.

Our friend is a very advanced programmer who does computer work for a living and has a high up status with Microsoft . He doesn't send these if they aren't real.  If he says this is for real, it for sure is.  Be aware..

VIRUS COMING !

Hi All,

I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus!

I checked Snopes, 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 FROM HALLMARK,' 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-mail to 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

SLAYER'S RESPONSE:

     I know I rely heavily on Snopes for their investigation into the reliability of the messages written about in the RC Blog, so I decided to follow the footsteps of the author of this message for the slaying process. One would think that if CNN called this the "worst virus" ever, a simple keyword search on the CNN site would render some sort of result, but no such luck. A keyword search at Norton (which is, in reality Symantec) revealed some of the partial truth because there was a worm virus, called W32.Mixor.Q, that was sent through email in 2001. The final check, Snopes, where the author also verified the status, (which, if the anonymous, high up status computer dude doesn't forward hoaxes, then why did the author need to check Snopes?) revealed the truth that a virus did exist but it is old news now. I don't know, maybe the virus makers are slacking, so we need to replay old threats. The bottom line is that we are probably safe from this virus because it is likely saved on a floppy disc and who has disc drives anymore?



~Slayer



 http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=worst computer virus&primaryType=mixed&sortBy=date&intl=false


http://www.symantec.com/outbreak/happynewyear_worm.html

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