Spotlight On Virus Hoaxes.
Isn't it simply amazing how fast unsubstantiated heresay can fly across the web? This can be said of a lot of the junk e-mails that people seem to have a need to forward to one another, and the virus hoax is no exception. It just goes to show how much easier it is to go ahead and forward it to your entire address book, than to check and see if there's any truth to it. You can go to any antivirus software website, find the virus definitions, and see exactly what the virus is, what the virus does and just about any other fact that is available on the virus. That is...if it IS a virus. What if it's not? The virus definition libraries have a completely separate category for hoaxes. These things spread just as fast as any real virus. Everyone just wants to help each other avoid getting infected. Just as bad, the same hoaxes just seem to get used over and over and over. They aren't creative enough to come up with new ones... They just make changes to the old ones and recycle them. As if it's not enough to stay protected from genuine virus threats, we also have to verify whether the warning we just got from our neighbor is a real virus threat or if it's just a hoax. Aside from the "cry wolf" effect they may have on us, they are mostly just annoying. Especially if you are the type to keep a list of them next to your computer so you can be on the lookout ~