“A Card for You”- “Virtual Card For You”-or “Postcard” Virus Warning-Fiction!
Summary of the eRumor
The eRumor warns of a virus just discovered by Mcafee and classed by Microsoft as the most destructive ever.
It says the virus destroys “Sector Zero” from the heard disk, sends itself to all the names in your email address book, wipes out the hard disk, and has caused a panic in New York, according to CNN.
It says that the subject will be “A Card for You”, “Virtual Card for You”, or “Postcard.”
The Truth
This email is a hoax.
It has circulated continuously on the Internet since at least 2001.
There is no known virus called “A card for you” or “A virtual card for you.”
In July, 2007, someone added “Postcard” to the story and said that it had been verified as a true virus.
It is true that there was a virus that appeared in the summer of 2007 with a subject line of: “You’ve received a postcard from a family member.” There were several other variations of the subject line that talked about a “card” or a “greeting card.” But that virus had nothing to do with this false warning about “A card for you” or “A virtual card for you” and the warning that CNN had termed it the worst virus ever.
Neither Microsoft nor McAfee has had anything to say about it except that it is a hoax.
The CNN part of the eRumor was added by someone along the way.
I can’t believe spam still exists. I wrote a program about 5 years ago that is not based on technology (which spammers can adapt to faster than people who know you). I recently set it up so that anyone can use it. If you want to test it for yourself, send an email to “Me@RandyHamilton.com” and I’ll set you up as an alpha tester One unique thing, is you can see what it *would* do before you give it permission to do anything at all. I’ll have support for gmail address (they use SSL) sometime in the next week. But I already trust it enough to run my business emails through it.
Seriously, spam is beatable. Because the people, companies, and websites you want email from know *something* about you – but spammers only know your email address. That’s what my system is based on.
Send me an email and you’ll see how it works. You’ll never get spam, and you’ll never lose an email. I have those same “e-card” emails sitting in about 7 different email account. Not one of them got through of course. And if you think that virus is bad – check out nimda. One person did a preview on that email when I was the CTO of an investment bank, and it took me a good 17 hours to get it out of our networks.
Spammers will only get better at exploiting email – but they’ll never be good enough to beat a system that looks for some indication that you actually *know* the person you’re emailing. I wrote the thing, and *I* couldn’t get a piece of email in your INBOX against your wishes.
Comment by RexDevious — August 25, 2007 @ 2:59 am