Recently, an acquaintance forwarded an e-mail message to everyone in her address book with the following in the subject line: "Alert virus from Argentina -- this is not a joke."
The message said a virus called "jdbgmgr.-exe" is infecting computers at an alarming rate and cannot be detected by such anti-virus software manufacturers as Norton and McAfee.
Wow. Argentina must be light-years ahead in computer technology. The message then gave instructions on how to delete the file, which is identifiable by a teddy bear icon.
The same e-mail circulated about two years ago. I bought into the alarming tone of the message and deleted the offending teddy bear. Then I thought about it. Could this "virus" be so insidious as to pass by all employees of McAfee and Norton -- not to mention CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek and msnbc.com -- and end up right in my own mailbox?
Wow. Do I have connections or what?
According to www.snopes.com, an urban-legend reference site, the teddy bear program is a Java debug manager used by programmers. So if you fell for the message as I did the first time, don't sweat it; the deletion won't harm your computer operating system unless you are a Java computer programmer.
Not all chain e-mail, however, is completely false.
The Web site www.thebreastcancersite.com does offer free mammograms to women who cannot afford to pay for them, but the chain message that has been circulating about this service gives the impression that one click buys one free mammogram.
Not true, according to www.snopes.com.
The Breast Cancer Site uses advertising dollars to pay for free mammograms. One mammogram costs 45,000 clicks. Advertisers who link to the Breast Cancer Site pay for the mammograms. But this information has been omitted from the chain e-mail.
McAfee offers tips on its Web site on how to sort out hoaxes from authentic messages. It says to beware of messages that contain some threat of danger, especially the "most powerful danger ever."
Also keep in mind that there are more reliable ways to distribute useful information to mass audiences. (By the way, Oliver North did not name Osama bin Laden as a threat in 1987 during the Iran-Contra hearings.)
Helge Moulding, a computer programmer in Salt Lake City, Utah, who maintains a Web site devoted to urban legends and folklore, said, "You can think of them as computer viruses written to run on people, though that analogy can be carried too far.
"Hackers love to talk about 'social engineering,' by which they really mean lying to commit fraud. These e-mails are a relatively benign form of that, though they could easily be used to cause more serious harm," Moulding said.
Most recently, an e-mail circulated that contained photos allegedly taken by Israeli satellites of the U.S. space shuttle Columbia as it exploded. The photos are so crisp, clear and full of color that they could have come from a movie. Well, guess what? They did come from a movie. The photos, according to snopes.com, are still frames from the 1998 movie "Armageddon."
While the United States is at war with Iraq and hunting down Osama bin Laden, even more rumors are likely to proliferate on the Internet. Before you pass any along, be sure to check them out.
Write to Noelle at nmbowman@bsu.edu
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