Computing with Cait

How many times have you received an email message that:

• Provides information about a new virus that will supposedly delete everything on your hard drive, or
• Instructs you to delete a particular file that is harboring a virus, or
• Claims to provide as an attachment the fix for a virus?

These messages usually recommend that you forward them to everyone in your address book. How can your tell whether what you are receiving is valid information or a hoax?

Before you act on the contents of a message such as those described above, take a few minutes to check out a website provided by Symantec (manufacturers of Norton Anti-Virus software) www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html  that will tell you whether the information you have received is a hoax. If the message you have received regards a real virus, you can find the patch to solve the problem on the Symantec website. At a minimum these hoax messages simply add more junk mail to an overburdened email system; at the worst they can actually cause damage to your system because you follow the directions and delete a needed file or download an attachment that is really a virus.