Viruses - viruses and hoaxes

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Lately, lots of persons have been receiving warnings about computer viruses sent by email and destroying hard-drives, computers, etc etc

While the threat of viruses nowadays is still a reality, a lot of recent warnings are not real and merely practical "jokes" (or more commonly known as "hoaxes").

You will find some useful hints about viruses on these and other pages of the Computing Centre, to make sure that you do not send the warnings you receive to everyone you know, without knowing for sure that the warning you have received is legitimate and could pose a real threat to you and your colleagues(' computers).

Some general guidelines are:

• In order to activate a virus on your computer, you need to run the program or document that contains this virus. An email message is simply text, nothing more. The text itself cannot harm your computer in any way.
• The situation changes when your (mail)program will interpret the text/document you have received, either by executing it, or by starting a program that will interpret the document (cfr macro viruses in MS-Word). Then you are at risk. So it is always advisable to know exactly how your programs work, and to turn off those automated procedures that may put your computer at risk.
• There is absolutely no relation between a subject of a mailmessage and its contents. A message titled "Good times" or "PENPAL GREETINGS" - which are well-known hoaxes - can impose no threat at all.
• Also be careful with documents that you receive from other persons or which you download from the Internet (even WWW pages). While you may know the person who sent you the document, it may still contain a virus.
• There exist a lot of anti-virus detection programs which can avoid that your computer becomes infected.

You can find the virus page of the Computing Centre at

http://www.vub.ac.be/BFUCC/doc/faq/virus.faq.html

So if you have received a warning about a virus from someone, please do not send it to other persons just like that. Make sure that it is a legitimate warning, or otherwise contact someone who may be able to give you further advice on the message and the (possible) virus.

This way, hopefully one day, we will succeed in eradicating those "hoaxes" from the Internet.

Thank you for your cooperation.