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Everyone should know by now that you can't believe anything you get in the mail that's been forwarded 5 billion times from people who don't know.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Address-book change? It's just a hoax


Nov. 14, 2001


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, The Post Standard

   If you have a Windows PC, you probably believe the best defense against viruses is a good antivirus program. But sometimes you wonder if there's a trick or two that would stop viruses cold -- something you could do to your mail program, maybe.
   Something related to the address book, perhaps. That's what many folks have been asking me. They've received a tip in the mail forwarded from someone who forwarded it from someone else who forwarded it from who-knows-where, and they want to know if it works.
   The tip is a hoax and is full of misstatements. It goes like this (with my parenthetical comments): Since all worm-type viruses grab all the addresses in your address book and send themselves out to every recipient on your list (FALSE), the easiest way to stop them (FALSE) is to make sure the very first address in your address book is a fake address. This confuses the worm (FALSE) and blocks it from sending itself out to anyone (FALSE).
   I'll explain why this is a hoax shortly. But I need to bruise a few egos first. Everyone should know by now that you can't believe anything you get in the mail that's been forwarded 5 billion times from people who don't know. Falsehood rides the wind; truth tiptoes from door to door. You will just plain never get something truthful and factual in the mail that way. It won't happen.
   Back to the hoax. Worms often spread themselves by e-mail. They don't always do it. So even if this crazy idea worked to block viruses and worms that propagate by e-mail, it wouldn't stop all of them.
   So this is the first thing to remember. Worms and viruses can spread by many methods. E-mail is just one of them.
   The hoax makes it seem that viruses and worms aren't smart enough to figure how to send out more than one message at a time -- the hoax claims that if the first address is invalid, the worm will give up, which makes no sense at all -- and it says your e-mail software will show you an error message if the worm has trouble sending the first message. ("Attention, K-Win users! We're discounting messages in the virus aisle!")
   This is not the way Windows works and not the way Windows programs work. You might see an error message, but it won't tell you that a virus is trying to do something. It will be just as indecipherable as all the other error messages you've ever seen.
   The best way to treat this hoax is to delete it. Passing it on to your sister-in-law just makes life difficult for all the rest of us.
   Does anything like this work? No. Some people have told me they've found ways to rename their address book to keep viruses from finding it, but of course an address book that Windows can't find is no good. So if Windows can find it, viruses and worms can, too. (They'll simply look in the mother lode of all insecure databases, the Windows Registry, to locate the address book.)
   I sometimes wonder if hoax tips like this one actually originate in the minds of virus writers. It's easy to fool a few million people worldwide, and the relaxed vigilance of these gullible Windows users would make their PCs prime targets.
   Keep your PC out of target range. Make sure you have antivirus software. Update it often. And don't pass along anything that's been forwarded to you that purports to be advice about viruses and worms. The best defense is a good offense.