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August 19, 2003

Urban Legends, Hoaxes, and all

Urban Legends, Hoaxes, and all around Hocus PocusI
got an email from my Mom the other day, God love her... The message
started like many you may have seen forward to you by people you know:

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 08:27:32 -0700
From: "Patty Dowdle" <snip>
To: "<LOTS OF EMAIL ADDRESSES>"
Subject: FW: You may have a computer virus

I found this computer virus on my computer at work and deleted it.


The eventual body of the message of course contained the payload:

Hi All - On July 29, 2003, a "teddy bear" virus (better known as
"jdbgmgr.exe" INFECTED our computer along with our address book. Since
you are in our address book, it is likely that you will find the same
virus. The bad thing is that neither Norton nor McAfee can detect it.
This virus apparently sits quietly for 14 days before damaging
everyone's systems. It is sent automatically by messenger and by the
address book, whether or not you sent emails to your contacts.
(Unfortunately, it is never revealed where or who it came from.) It is
transferred without an "attachment" file. Here's how to check for the
virus and how to get rid of it: (Brad did this last night on our
computer and got rid of the virus.) :
The message proceeds to step by step provide instructions on how to
delete the VIRUS file from your system. After several years as a power
email user, I can't believe I still get this type of message forwarded
to me. Hasn't everyone already seen at least one of these urban legend
/ hoax emails yet? I guess people still get bilked out of money by
Nigerian Funds scams via email. What is worse is that people who maybe
are aware of the "hoax" Nigerian Funds scam, still believe the Kenyan
Funds scam via email.
My advice - before forwarding any informational email of any sort, if
it is at all possible that it may NOT be true... check it out first!
Before you waste even 5 minutes of time, of the first 50 or so people
you can think of and address the message to - check it out.

This site, Snopes
has always had good data. It is a great hoax, scam, urban legend site.
It seems to detail myths of all origins and indicates their validity.
Many things are TRUE - and reviewing the evidence is very interesting.
Most of the time, checking with Snopes will provide ample proof that
the email you are about to blast to your loved ones is a colossal waste
of time. We all win.
I won't give away the status of the particular message my Mom forwarded
to me... I'll let you all check Snopes yourself.
Well there is your update. Post more later.
Tom
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Posted by gcrgcr at August 19, 2003 10:07 PM

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