Comment on e-mail virus warnings and resources for 
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
http://kumite.com/myths/myths/

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 scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It
     will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice
     cream goes melty. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit
     cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field
     harmonics to scratch any CD's you try to play.

             It will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. It
     will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and
     leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming
     over. It will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit
     pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.

             Goodtimes will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will
     give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your
     gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your
     girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to
     your Discover card.

              It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she
     is dead, such is the power of Goodtimes, it reaches out beyond the
     grave to sully those things we hold most dear.

             It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't
     find it. It will kick your dog. It will leave libidinous messages on
     your boss's voice mail in your voice! It is insidious and subtle. It
     is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather
     interesting shade of mauve.

             Goodtimes will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the
     toilet seat up. It will make a batch of Methanphedime in your bathtub
     and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase
     gradeschoolers with your new snowblower.

       Listen to me. Goodtimes does not exist.

             It cannot do anything to you. But I can. I am sending this
     message to everyone in the world. Tell your friends, tell your
     family. If anyone else sends me another E-mail about this fake
     Goodtimes Virus, I will turn hating them into a religion. I will do
     things to them that would make a horsehead in your bed look like
     Easter Sunday brunch.

So take THAT, Goodtimes..............
 

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