Virus Alert!

[Warchild214]

Just wanted to make sure everyone in the Layo world was informed on this nasty one.  

Snopes confirms its for FOR REAL.   snopes.com: Here You Have / Just for You / Here It Is

 
 This happened in September, 2010, so beware.

Virus
Anyone using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoft and Norton

Please send it to everybody you know who has Access to the Internet. You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail titled: "Here You Have It" or "Just For You" If you open either file, a message will appear on your screen saying: 'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful....'

Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, and the person who sent it to you will gain access to your Name, e-mail and password. This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software's are not capable of destroying it.

The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself 'life owner'.

[Acacea]

Real virus referenced in hoax email? Always be cautious about email attachments, even from sources you trust and especially ones you don't, but don't use them as an excuse to spam everyone else.

EDIT: I am not accusing this thread of being spam, but was rather referring to the already very suspicious line in the email stating "send this to everyone you know."

Anything that tells me to send to everyone I delete and run a scan after opening, heh.

[morunas]

Go for gmail and only open emails from trusted sources.

Phishing is already old and unfortunately loads of people (special those who don't know coin about computers) fall into it. It's said that the notifications regarding this crappy tries of invasion are themselves crappy.

The amount of keyloggers and worms in computers throughout the world should surpass ten times the number of hairs in my head.

For someone within IT environment it's easy to stay mentally "protected"... but for the rest there is a great majority who will follow it blindly.

[Warchild214]

I agree too Acacea, one can never be to safe IMO.  I think at least knowing what to look for before hand can save an entire HD rebuild sometimes...if it does happen to be real.  I was sent the info from a realiable source, so just wanted to get the word out to others who may not have heard about it yet and to be cautious.

[morunas]

Certainly!

But the people who suffer the most from phishing we usually can't reach easily (grandparents that barely use computers... young kids who will only learn the hard way...)

Good guidelines should be:
- Make backups to ext HD
- Have a good spam filter
- Know where you click xD
- imo not mandatory... an antivirus (Kaspersky's good one)
- keep your most important information encrypted even within the computer (bank stuff for instance)

[Dorganath]

Microsoft and AOL don't generally put out virus warnings.

As Acacea said, the virus is real, but the warning is recycled and years  old. Read to the bottom of the Snopes page. It has the old hoax e-mail  listed:

snopes.com: Life Is Beautiful Virus

The irony is that in the case of the original hoax, it's the e-mail  itself that's the "virus".

[Hellblazer]

Alright just checked with two websites that deals with internets hoax.. and guess what. Both says this is a hoax

HoaxBuster - La vie est belle

Life Is Beautiful Virus - Urban Legends

The first is in french, the second in English. Always good to check multiple sources.

//edit well Dorg was faster lol. These hoaxes of sending those messages to every one you know only serves one purpose. The purpose is to create an excessive amount of emails being sent in a short period of time, maxing out the servers capabilities and in the hope for those starting the hoax of crashing the email servers. Causing delays and loss of money to the companies that hosts those servers, the email providers, and also the businesses that actually uses those email providers.

[Warchild214]

Thanks to all for the clarifications!

[Acacea]

I agree too Acacea, one can never be to safe IMO.  I think at least knowing what to look for before hand can save an entire HD rebuild sometimes...if it does happen to be real.  I was sent the info from a realiable source, so just wanted to get the word out to others who may not have heard about it yet and to be cautious.

Yeah, but where did he get it? Reliable sources pass on chain letters all the time. If you click the link referenced in the email itself you can read all the way down for what this email is a variation on.

Getting hoax emails from reliable sources is not really any different from getting money from your mom. She is tidy, keeps it in her purse, and washes her hands. You know she's clean, but it's the fifty thousand people that handled it before her that should give pause before chewing on a dollar bill. With these emails, you have to think about the original sender and all of the ones they have since passed through, not just the person before you. They've just been "washed" by landing in your buddy's inbox and giving them the appearance of being legitimate. That's why I say even sources you trust

EDIT - Sorry, I am slow at work

[Hellblazer]

Real virus referenced in hoax email? Always be cautious about email attachments, even from sources you trust and especially ones you don't, but don't use them as an excuse to spam everyone else.

EDIT: I am not accusing this thread of being spam, but was rather referring to the already very suspicious line in the email stating "send this to everyone you know."

Anything that tells me to send to everyone I delete and run a scan after opening, heh.

Also using a service that automatically scans incoming emails are a good thing. You can set outlook express or other computer base email retriever services to scan automatically the incoming emails as it gets it from the email servers. That will be a good way to stop the proliferation of email based viruses. Also, most major email provider already have scanners integrated in their services that scans emails also, a scan that from what I understand you are not able to circumvent.  Although it's never a bad idea to use caution also. But being that they are offering a service that needs a security, they are already scanning your emails to know if it's spams, convert them for cellphone usage etc etc etc. In that process they are also automatically scanning them for viruses. The only thing that is an unknown is how often their virus list gets updated, so just because of that, caution is not a bad thing.

One other good thing to know is that Norton and Microsoft never sends emails warning you of such things. In the.. hmm I don't even remember for how long I've been using both companies, I have never received any letters email of such content. In fact the most things I receive as news from those company are actually things that you could consider as spam lol.