checking whether or not the warning is a hoax. By Chris LaFontaine May 12, 2000 Friends, Following the news about the LOVE LETTER virus I began to receive several e-mail messages with warnings about other viruses. I receive such e-mail with some regularity. Perhaps you do, too. I do appreciate receiving timely information about authentic viruses, and I do sometimes pass such information along. However, most of the warnings are hoaxes and I’d like to offer my thoughts and a consciousness perspective on their nature. My sense is that hoaxes are a distortion inserted into consciousness that take our focus away from what is true. They have a buzzy, hyped, caffeine-like energy. They even seem to have a drug-like effect in the way they can hold our attention and prompt a squandering of time and resources while we send billions of e-mails all around the world, thereby continuing and growing the distortion. In other words, I consider the proliferation and spreading of the false messages to be a more REAL level of the "virus". When we forward messages we add to the energy present and continue to insert it into our experience as reality. Please help to stop the spreading of e-mails that are of energies that only create distraction by taking a few seconds to check with some of the sources I have listed below. The tricky thing is that we also add our energies together in a more helpful way when we forward information about a real virus. It's a bit of a dance sometimes, no question. What I am asking in this letter is to become conscious of what you’re doing when you push that forward button. The e-mail arrives with your name on it. Is the energy of the message in alignment with who you are? It doesn’t matter if it’s a cartoon, cute story, or a virus warning. Discern what you want reflecting you. Here’s some information about warnings I have recently received as well as sources to check out virus warnings when you receive them. The “Celcom Screen Saver” (destroys your hard disk) virus is a hoax. See: http://www.datafellows.com/hoaxes/sellsav.htm The “Sandman” virus (hacks into your hard drive) is a hoax. See: http://www.datafellows.com/hoaxes/sandman.htm The “Win a Holiday” virus (erases your hard drive) is a hoax. See: http://www.stiller.com/holiday.htm Helpful sites to check out future warnings include: http://urbanlegends.about.com/culture/urbanlegends/msubvir.htm The US Dept. of Energy has a good page with information about hoaxes and how to spot them: http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html Thanks for reading this. I’d like to end with a bit of humor spoofing a warning for the “GOODTIMES” virus (hoax) READ THIS: Goodtimes will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It Goodtimes will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't Goodtimes will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the Listen to me. Goodtimes does not exist. It cannot do anything to you. But I can. I am sending this So take THAT, Goodtimes.............. |