Mail Viruses - True or false? ("J OIN THE CREW" message)

[George Emery]

Those pesky mail viruses keeping popping up to scare patrons and 
staff and the warnings always distributed by well-meaning souls. I 
keep this bookmark handy for such occasions to distribute info about 
the offending culprits. Hope it helps. 

http://www.kumite.com/myths/

George

> Date:          Thu, 19 Feb 1998 13:24:18 -0800
> Reply-to:      jeremiah at spl.org
> From:          Jeremiah Cruit-Salzberg <jeremiah at spl.org>
> To:            Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
> Subject:       Mail Viruses - True or false? ("J OIN THE CREW" message)

> I keep seeing these don't open this or that message or your computer
> will spontaneously melt or whatever.  What I have always told everyone
> is that mail messages are in ASCII (or HTML) and that they can't hurt.
> That the only way you can be damaged by email is through attachments and
> that you should never open any you receive (except from friends and only
> after virus scanning).  I do know that you can set the option in many
> mail programs to automatically open attachments, now this is the only
> way that I could imagine an email damaging your system just by opening
> it and so I tell everyone to make sure that is not checked.
> 
> If anyone knows of an email that can kill - not second hand or hearsay -
> and can forward a copy to me, I would love to be disproved.  Or if you
> can tell me how I might be wrong I would like to know so I can inform my
> customers appropriately.  I'm not sure if you could possibly embed a
> CGI, VBscript or Javascript that could wipe your computer when you
> opened it.
> 
> By the by, here is the most recent message that 20 of my customers
> forwarded me and wanted to know what sorts of measures I was going to
> take to make sure we were safe:
> 
> 	>    Subject:	virus warning
> 	>      
> 	>    Date: Thursday, Fe bruary 12, 1998 8:08 
> 	>      
> 	>    If you receive an email titled "J OIN THE CREW" DO NOT OPEN
> IT.  IT 

> 	>    friends ASAP. 
> 
> 
> ____
>        Jeremiah Cruit-Salzberg
>        Acting WAN Manager
>        Seattle Public Library
>        jeremiah at spl.org
> 
> 
=================================================================
George Emery
Library Systems Coordinator - Canisius College
2001 Main Street Buffalo NY 14208 - 716.888.2927 - fax: 716.888.2887
emeryg at canisius.edu - http://www.canisius.edu/~emeryg
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