United States

Our band received the following message/WARNING from a friend of ours on another musician site. So PLEASE take heed AND pass this along to ALL CONCERNED. We copied the message as is, and pasted it here:

Peace.
UNCALLED4OUR.

MESSAGE AS FOLLOWS:

also checked with Snopes; it's real!! KHD
Subject: Fw: Please read, BIG virus coming

I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus!

I checked snopes.com, this morning ( 03-17-08) 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!

You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with
an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD,' regardless of who sent it to you. It is
a v virus w which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of
your computer. This virus will be received from someone who has your e-mail
address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send
this e-mail
to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to
receive the virus and open it.

If you receive a mail called' POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a
friend, do not open it.! This includes all cards, too. Shut down your
computer immediately.

This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been classified by
Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by
McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This
virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital
information is kept.

COPY THIS E-MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS. REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO
THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US.

http://www.snopes.com/computer /virus

..Or else you could all simply have purchased a Mac and avoided this situation

Seriously,

Thanks for the word, PSpecialist.

Howlin'

P.S. to Cript,

Your, lackadisical, " devil may care" retort to UNCALLED4's waning was uncalled for.

I don't know about you, but I sure 'Nuff don't need a hole burned into MY HARDdrive!

If them there Hackin' cacksukas would have used the word "BOOBS" instead of "POSTCARD", methinks your 'puter would be in BIG trouble!

LOL! Good one, Uncle Howlin!

I am going to go check out this virus. Hey, I will just go download it, why not? Who does not want their hard disk to explode? *Goes to have fun with the virus.* This one should be entitled "Need a date, a life, college education?" I would click!

Peace out, GuitarAnatomy.

Friends, gather around! Enjoy the following link:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_postcard_virus.htm

It is a hoax my friends.

From the master researcher and debunker of myth, GuitarAnatomy.

FAKE....HOAX...

Yep, it's a hoax, I knew it soon as I saw all the stuff in ALL CAPS to get your attention and make you think it was really really important. I'm very surprised it didn't also have lots of exclamation points too!!!!! They usually do.

Also anything NOT sent to you by one of the antivirus companies, Norton, McAffee, Panda, AVG etc is usually the first tip off.

Here's the link to the Snopes write up

Postcard Hoax

There is a "postcard" virus, but it sends you to a bogus link that actually installs a trojan on your machine, not even close to "burning your whole hard disc C." Read the article, it explains well without me typing for a half hour.

Then check the section marked NOTE in bold text toward the bottom. That's almost the exact same text as in this message, the same text in bold, etc.

Then...CNN and Microsoft are NOT antivirus companies, they are NOT the ones that "announce" viruses, they REPORT them after being discovered, confirmed and announced by antivirus companies such as Norton and McAffee. Microsoft DOES NOT send out virus warnings. Antivirus companies do that.

What you posted is a variation of the "Virtual Card for You" hoax perpetrated at least as early as 2000 and simply modified to make it a "new" one. Also very similar to "Invitation", also noted in the article.

I've seen tons of these in 10 years as a computer technician, I can spot them immediately, I check on snopes and antivirus sites just to confirm what I'm already sure of. If it has lots of ALL CAPS and !!!!! all over the place, be very suspicious, it's probably a hoax. If it does not come from an antivirus company, (you have to be signed up for their mailing list too) it's a hoax. If it names companies like Microsoft, AOL, CNN, etc it's most likely a hoax, they are not antivirus companies.

And the very first red flag is the ever present

PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!

in all caps of course.

The first line of the text should be a flag too.

You should be alert during the next few days.

Bold text mine.

Then...

It is a v virus w which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE

Bold text again mine.

The proper word would be ALERTED. That should tell you it was typed up by some dummy who has no grasp of grammar or a foreigner who does not speak English as a first language. Or both. Norton and McAffee use spell checkers and proofreaders...something like this would be proofread and would never get out of the office.

A v virus...w which...first time I've ever seen anybody stutter on a keyboard...also would never get by a proofreader.

Then the repeated warning to send it to everyone in the known universe...

These emails have one purpose...getting you to forward them to as many people as possible in an effort to clog email servers and cause lots of people trouble by making their email either really really slow or shut down the server entirtely to be cleaned up and/or rebooted when it can't handle the traffic.

As I said I've seen them for years and can spot one in seconds. I knew this was a hoax before I was halfway through reading it, all I had to do was confirm it. A little common sense and know what to look for and you won't be fooled by this kind of garbage, it's called "social engineering". They use all the caps, exclamation points and your fear of viruses along with dropping a few familiar names to make you believe it and forward it to everybody, then after a day or so every email server you can find is trying to forward zillions of them, slowing everything down.

In a sense, it is a virus, but the only damage it causes is bogging down email servers and making you wait longer for your next email hoax.

Whew!

Some of us are a little more "well-rounded" 'bout general knowledge, including technology. That, however, is a bit shaky for us.This band's collective tech "I.Q." might combine to make a single person We thought better to err on the side of caution, as it would've felt wrong to do otherwise

Peace.

It's all good...troubleshooting information, exchanging experiences...there's gold in them there hills!

If them there Hackin' cacksukas would have used the word "BOOBS" instead of "POSTCARD", methinks your 'puter would be in BIG trouble!

YOU AIN'T WHISTLIN' DIXIE!

Where would we be without our urban legends...

^ ditto. I have heard that those things are for collecting email addresses.

I have heard that those things are for collecting email addresses.

That may be a secondary benefit somewhere down the line, but the primary goal, as I stated before, is to bog down email servers.

That said, these and any other garbage emails people incessantly forward do certainly contribute to spam. Someone sends a stupid joke to 27 people, with somehting like "this is soooo funny, forward it to everybody". they all forward it to 20 or 30 people, those 400 or more forward it to another 20-30 people each, in a couple of days 5,000 people have every email address in that long string of forwarded addresses. One of them is selling to spammers.

This is why on the very rare occasion I send or forward anything to more than one address, I send it BCC (Blind Carbon Copy). Only one email address is visible, the recipient has no idea who else it was sent to, the spammer only gets one address.

That's a secondary boon to the underbelly of the Internet, more addresses to spam. The main idea though is to clog email servers. That was the original reason for the chain letter that went around in about 1995 or 96 claiming MS and/or AOL (may have been Intel, not AOL, can't remember) would be tracking your email and would pay various small amounts for each person you forwarded it to. Claims in all caps were made that people who probably never existed had recceived checks for $20,000 or more, most people believed it.

But of course, IT'S TRUE, JOE BLO GOT A CHECK FOR 28 GAZILLION!!!!!! REALLY!!!!!!! THIS IS NO JOKE!!!!!!!!

Yeah right...

!!!!!!!

Such tracking was not possible at the time, not without huge expense at least, and major league privacy concerns, and at the time nobody could find any hard information on the "attorney" this supposedly was checked and endorsed by. I got several copies. It was a hoax, of course, and duped a lot of people, but it did succeed in slowing a few major trunk email servers to a crawl. Similar to the DDoS attack, but not as pointedly malicious. If the server has to transfer 2 1/2 zillion copies of this junk email, it has no choice but to make your legitimate note to grandma wait until it gets a minute.

REALLY!!!!!!!!

P-
I'm a loving the fact that you are showing Louisianians (as we are sometimes stereotyped) are FAR from dumb !!!!

Geaux LSU Tigers !!! , two BCS College Football Championships !

(No other NCAA School can make this boast)

Rock On, El'Peno'

WTF is this all about them there boys in Louiseananer is just briter than I is.