04 December
what else was written this day?
The Ashley Marc James Hoax.
Once more I have been forced to read one of those wetware viruses where the code and method of transmittion is run on human brains using say email or IM.
Courtney: If someone by the name of Ashley Marc James wants to add you to their list dont accept it. Its a virus. Tell everyone on your list because if somebody on your list adds them you will get it too. It is a hard drive killer and a very horrible virus. Please pass this on to everyone on your list. We need to find out who is using this accounts. Sorry for the inconvenience. Right click on your group name of your buddy list and click Send Message to all. Copy and paste it.
(I'd love to know who this Courtney is).
A quick search would already show that this information is fake. But that's the subtalty of the con trick. The call to action orders you to tell every one you know.
What is strange is the number of people that obey such an order.
No wonder a call to action after an advert gets such a good response.
"If someone by the name of Ashley Marc James wants to add you to their list dont accept it. Its a virus..." This is a classic spamish chain letter designed to cause heavy drain on the service and raise panic. I have never experenced a time when a message of this format in email, IM, PM or other format was not a fake.
Virus companies need at most 24 hours to identify a cure for a virus once they obtain it. Most often they can deal with it in one hour or less. The vast number of virus types can be patterened and ready for detection inside of sixty seconds. The rest of the time is a double check that you have a unique handle.
Such messages are never from real anti-virus companies. ie a HOAX. Furthermore the same search told me that already 42 different and rather gullable people had post messages to web pages to tell the world about this "virus".
One page I visited had a well meaning comment that said: "'ASHLEY MARC JAMES' is the name to delete or just don't add her as a friend!!It's a virus!!Like I said,if you have friends of friends that have added her then you're screwed too!Have a wonderful day!;)"
The insanity of the thing makes me mad.
Stop!
Think!
What are you talking about? Have you not wondered why Yahoo who could be cost billions if this were true have failed to act. They have not acted because they is nothing to act against.
The big clue is the panic button. This "wetware virus" is very clever. You see, it's not enought to get people to warn thier friends to protect them no you must warn them and thier friends too or "you will suffer from spots and weasles" or whatever the thing claims. Therefore you have to push everyone you know "just in case".
After all a simple message to your buddies couldn't hurt?
Could it?
But all of your buddies are going to hit "SEND ALL" and if you have 30 buddies that is thirty junk copies of the message back to you.
Now here is the trick. You will start to believe it after seeing the message that many times. Worse still some truely unthinking people will actually follow these instuctions each time they get them.
Can you imaging the ammount of pointless traffic the IM network now has to process?
And why?
Because you did not stop to say, hang on this sounds like a bunch of junk to me.
A best it is a simple HOAX and you have been "had". At worst it is a way to ruin someone's good name. (Sounds like hate to me.)
Going back to the IM I got: "We need to find out who is using this accounts." ever ask who "we" is?
What business have they finding out who is running a given account? Why do they need to invade my privicy? Sounds suspect to me.
And it is suspect.
Yahoo know who their members are and can trace them to physical addresses should they need to; but this dodgy "we" is probably up to no good. If indeed they are able to anything at all.
This is most common on PM on big websites like gaia online where the poster pretends to be an admin.
What is more: have you not, maybe, considered that if this was an issue then Yahoo would simply block the name inside of ten seconds of realising it was a problem? Problem solved - account disabled.
"if somebody on your list adds them you will get it too." if anyone could ever writes a virus that could hurt other people like that then they have found a way to infect you without your action and there would be nothing you could do. We call these viruses "worms" and that is what we have Anti-Virus software for.
Adding people can not infect you as the contact information is not code but data. Otherwise IM software would be a riot of viruses already.
Here is one last insight "for your 'buddy list'" that indicates an AIM (AOL IM) message yet I got this over Y! (Yahoo) which means it has "jumped". How does it jump? Foolish humans passing on an idiot message.
Please forgive me if I sound irritated by this - it spoils things for everyone and after a while you just have to say: enough! There is no "Ashley Marc James virus" (while trying very hard not to insult one's friends even though just at that moment you might want to).
