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from The Nando Times on Tuesday, February 18, 2003

Beware! Some nasty viruses are lurking out there.

Some people with nothing better to do in their lives than make others miserable are cooking up new toxic programs every day. We have often wondered if there was a monetary relationship between virus authors and virus killers, each supplying the other's means of a living. Don't laugh. It's possible.

Along with all the nasty stuff that prowls the Internet, there's also a bunch of hoax viruses, and the strange thing about them is they never seem to die. There was a recent outbreak - if you dare call it that - of so-called "Teddy Bear" virus. In this hoax, the user was instructed to delete a file with a Teddy Bear icon that was perfectly fine and useful to have around.

Right along with viruses, there are so many urban legends and nearly credible-sounding tales flooding and clogging up the bandwidth. We are here to tell you how to ferret out the good, bad and ugly in just a few steps.

For some readers, this is old stuff. We apologize for the repetition. We receive enough e-mail with questions, though, that this bears repeating. You might want to bookmark these sites.

For every story that someone asks you to pass around, forward, or distribute in any way - don't.

Odds are a dollar to a pile of penguin poop that it's made-up junk. The best validation site we know of is snopes.com. The site's crew takes the hardline science approach, so don't expect much credibility given to anything metaphysical. When it comes to getting the facts out about hoaxes or cons, go here before you forward or even read the suspicious message in detail. Most of the time, the sample message on the snopes site will read just like your letter from the attorney in Nairobi who wants you to hold $500,000 for a week for a fee, or some such nonsense.

On the virus side, two sites of renown are symantec.com and hoaxbusters.org. Hoaxbusters deals with both virus and urban legend misinformation. Something particularly valuable is the article on "Five Telltale Signs" of a hoax message.

Similar in name is hoaxbusters.ciac.org, which is run by the Department of Energy, of all things. But lots of good hoaxbusting information there, too.

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