Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

A couple days ago my wife got one of those annoying emails warning of the “Life is Beautiful.pps” powerpoint attachments which, if opened, it warned, would wipe out your entire C: drive. And, and this is the good part, they get your PASSWORD too!

Just so you don’t check it out yourself, at the bottom of the email it says “verified by Snopes.com”. Which of course, it isn’t..Snopes exposes the hoax. So does TruthOrFiction.com. But people don’t check things out for themselves.

It’s a hoax that dates back to 2002.

Your first clue is the “it will wipe out your hard drive”. Very few viruses ever did. Why would they? They want to profit from their work and wiping out your hard drive just doesn’t pay. They want to turn your machine into a spam bot that they control. At least nowadays they do. There have been some malicious, destructive viruses, they just aren’t that prevalent.

My wife of course sent that family an email with a link to both snopes.com’s review of the hoax and truthorfiction’s with the suggestion that they send out a correction to everyone.

With one BIG difference.

We suggested they use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) instead of the CC that they used on their email. Why? We sent this link also:

Why and How to use BCC.

Bottom line is that not using BCC exposes our email address to spam and gives our address to everyone they know. Sorry, but our email is kinda private - primarily because we don’t like spam.

Making that person look bad

We chose not to make that person look bad and sent our email to just them (She replied instead of “reply to all”). But you know what? They never did send out a correction. Probably didn’t read about BCC either. That’s just rude, IMHO. If I ever send out faulty info, I send a correction as soon as I’m made aware of it. Everyone should.

The next day someone else did a “Reply to All”. Another reason to use BCC. This other person pointed out the hoax for them to everyone else. Makes them look kinda stupid. Much more so than if they would have sent the correction themselves.

But even this second person used CC instead of BCC and the resulting email was such a disaster that I didn’t even look at it the first time. Only when I wanted to blog about how bad it was did I see, clear at the bottom, the purpose for their correspondence.

Folks, I know it sounds like I’m just trying to generate sales, and yes, I do appreciate the sales, but take a look at my email etiquette ebook - I’m still selling it for less than 10 bucks.

Is it worth 10 bucks to not look so inept? Is it worth 10 bucks to have people read your email instead of deleting it on sight?

Check out my email etiquette ebook here.

Want to see what this disaster of an email looked like? Get your barf bag ready…

(intentionally blurred to protect the innocent)

Then, eventually..

here’s the original message: (Direct from Microsoft & Norton! - rrriiiiight!)

>
> Many of you may have already received this – but am passing it along.
>
>
>
> Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on.
>>>
>>> This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoft
>>> and Norton.
>>>
>>> Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet.
>>>
>>> You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail with a Power Point
>>> presentation ‘ Life is Beautiful’
>>> If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and
>>> delete it immediately.
>>>
>>> If you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying:
>>> ‘It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful.’
>>>
>>> Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person who
>>> sent it t o you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.
>>>
>>> This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon.
>>> AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus
> software’s are
>>> not capable of destroying it.
>>>
>>> The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself ‘life owner’.
>>>
>>> PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them
>>> to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY!
>>> THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES
>
> ———————————————————————-
> –

Then a signature block here with a favorite quote (omitted)

>
>
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.6/1150 - Release Date:
> 11/24/2007 5:58 PM
>
>———————————————————————–
>-
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.8/1154 - Release Date:
>11/27/2007 11:40 AM
>
>

Then FINALLY, we get to the message that the sender wanted us to know:

This email has been circulating for a long time. Click on the Snopes check below

Snopes.com <http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/life.asp>

How many people will scroll that far down (past all of that GARBAGE) to read what you have to say?

Which is why I prefer to put my reply at the top, and if the person needs to read the history, they can keep reading.

But do you see what I mean?

Enough said.