Irish Virus

[ShyTorque]

At Christmas I received the following, camouflaged as a season's greeting.

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This is the Irish Virus!

As we haven't yet fully got the hang of programming, please email this to all your friends and acquaintances and then delete all files on your own hard drive.

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Begorrah! It works so beware.

[ExSimGuy]

One similar to this ("the honour virus") is actually listed in one of the links posted under "virus hoaxes" on this board ;)

Warning

This virus is very dangerous as there are people who have managed to learn to switch on their computers, start a mail browswer, and will still follow any instructions that are contained in emails :)

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What Goes Around . . . . .
. . often makes a better landing

[DreamCatcher]

Had the Irish Virus e-mail sent to me - very funny to read. But the text was in the body of the e-mail, and as I understand it, not a problem.

The problem is with ATTACHMENTS i.e. click to open/load/run/execute etc. Simple e-mails, whatever the text content, are OK.

Unless anybody knows different?

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'I'll take control...'
'You have control.'
'Well give me it then!!'

[ExSimGuy]

text is not a problem, as long as it really is text. If your email client (worst offender is MS Outlook, but others are also susceptible) is set to allow HTML to display, then HTML code is run by your computer. You need the latest anti-virus (I use McAfee clinic for about $25 a year) and keep it updated.

attachments can also be craftily malevolent as they can be disguised to appear to be "innocent" attachments like image files (which normally cannot do viral activity) but have "double extension" file names, such as "picture.bmp.XXX", where the "XXX" bit is an executable extension (and there's quite a few of those these days) but is often not seen by the user, depending on how your computer is set up.

The only (hopefully comprehensive answer is to have a "constant virus vigilance such as, per my suggestion above, a regularly updated in-memory anti-virus.

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What Goes Around . . . . .
. . often makes a better landing

[ShyTorque]

Hey Guys......good advice and all that...

But it WAS just a joke!