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Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:10 pm
by marcus
You may recieve an apparently harmless email with a powerpoint presentation....
Life is beautiful
DO NOT OPEN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES AND DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY.
If opened a message will appear saying...
it is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful. Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING ON YOUR P.C and the person who sent it will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.
This is a new virus which started on saturday,A.O.L. has already confirmed the severity and antivirus softwares ARE NOT CAPABLE OF DESTROYING IT.
Please pass this information on.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:47 pm
by Sylvia
Thank you Marcus for alerting us.

May I also repeat the warning about Paypal which I put on one of the iffy posts which has been removed. I strongly recommend if you have your PP acount linked to your bank account that you change it and link to an account (if you must) which you only filter money in as and when it is relevant to buy specific things. Someone I know had his account emptied fraudulently overnight of a great deal of money and the trouble it is causing trying to get it back is unbelievable. And he is very IT aware and was sure he was suitably protected.

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 3:10 am
by Rebecca
Thought I would let you know that this is a hoax email. A lot of these circulate and are designed to bog down ISP's as if they get circulated widely they become like spam.

If you get an email like this - and it will nearly always come from a friend/family/collegue etc. sent because they are doing the right thing and warning you - you need to check out whether it is hoax or not BEFORE you send it on. A good website to go to is:
http://www.snopes.com/computer/computer.asp
or just www.snope.com and follow the links to the computer section. You can check the validity of the email there. Also, most big antivirus manufacturers will have a list on their websites of valid viruses, hoaxes etc. or you can contact them and find out if it is real. If it is they are usually aware of it and working on a fix anyway.

Big thing is - First DON"T PANIC - most emails like this are a hoax designed to make you panic.
- Second - check it out BEFORE you send it on.
- Third - let other people (the one's you got the email from) know about the possibilities of hoaxes and where to find out if they are true or not. After all, the more of us who know where to go to check the less problem these hoaxes are.
- Fourth - if is legitimate then update your virus scanner and run a full scan to make sure you haven't been infected ayway - you should always do regular scans and back up all you important info.

Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:34 am
by Peter thornton
I've just been attacked by a virus which got in when I opened a "Greeting Card" that had been sent to me.

The virus pretends to be an XP Antivirus programme and is quite difficult to get rid of.

So, watch out for "Greeting Cards" and don't open them unless you know where they've come from.