“Hi all, I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus!  This is the worst virus announced by CNN.  I checked Snopes (URL above), and  it is for real !! Get this E-mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP.  PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!”

I usually receive one or two of these messages a month from friends and business contacts.  Either I’m being asked to check them out, or they’re just forwarding them in a well-meaning attempt to help me avoid some kind of disaster befalling my computer.

This kind of e-mail hoax has been running for almost as long as I’ve had e-mail; many of the messages have retained exactly the same phrasing over the years.  Here are some tell-tale signs by which you can recognise when a message is safe to ignore:

• Norton won’t be “gearing up” for it.  Viruses don’t tend to schedule themselves conveniently like this.  The moment anti-virus software providers are aware of a virus, they’ll dissect it and release an update for their package, which gets downloaded automatically in the background.  Chances are you’ll never even know.  (Check that your home PC’s anti-virus package is updating at least once a day.)
• The message recommends that you forward it to everyone you know.  This is pure chain letter psychology.  They’re trying to see how far they can get the message to spread.
• The message contains pseudo-technical gobbledegook: for example, a virus that “burns” your disk.  The only thing your computer can burn is CDs or DVDs and even that depends on it having a CD/DVD writer as opposed to a reader.
• It contains melodramatic and meaningless advice to shutdown your computer immediately.  What, and never turn it on again?  It’s true that in the case of some genuine viruses this can be absolutely the right thing to do, but it’s usually followed by a call to your IT support person.
• It includes further exhortations to send the message on to everyone, just in case you didn’t get the point.  In CAPITALS and in bold too.
• In case that doesn’t work, it brings in the big guns – Microsoft, CNN, and so on.  People tend to associate these large corporations with authority, so the writer of the hoax is trying to bring some spurious authority to their message.  That still doesn’t mean it’s true.
• Finally, it will often use the self-important phrase “the most destructive virus ever”.  Oooh, scary!  This fumblingly inadequate machismo masks the reality that, in fact, many viruses are a bit crap.  One or two high-profile instances have caused genuine havoc, but there are many that fell at the first hurdle.

I recommend that you adopt a default viewpoint of scepticism where these messages are concerned.  The best way to deal with them is generally to delete them.  If in doubt, paste a few key phrases from it into your favourite search engine  and see what turns up.

Many messages will tell you that their virus warning has been checked on Snopes (a useful resource to remember) or similar sites, but of course this is rubbish.  In general, Snopes and its peers will have identified the message as a hoax months previously.