Virus hoax doing the rounds at Christmas

[battye]

DENVER -- If it's December, you're probably getting the holiday round of "Warning -- Don't Click On..." e-mails.
It's now a seasonal event and I've already gotten five in the past two days.
The e-mails warn me not to click on any holiday greeting from family members or not to click on any holiday postcard links.

The e-mails claim a new virus was just discovered "yesterday" and many times link to articles on Snopes.com, for verification. Or they say CNN or some other media just reported it.
In fact, the e-mail warning itself is one of the hottest urban legends on Snopes.
Another problem is, the links usually go to stories that are months or even years old. Some of the virus alerts have been circulating since 2001 under various headings.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/14 ... etail.html
Always seems to be this time of year when we get the hoaxes
I haven't got any yet, but I bet if I look in my email account which is notorious for getting spammed I'll find a few.

[Layzie Bone]

seems like most of the viruses are on myspace...

a few tips:

makes sure the link you're clicking on is directing you to the site it is supposed to be taking you, because just because a link says www.google.com doesn't mean it's going there. If you're downloading music or other media off of p2p networks, check the filesize and file type. Most viruses are small usually under 700 KB, most mp3's are around 3 MB or larger, and an mp3 wouldn't have .exe or .zip or .rar as at the end of the filename. Run an antivirus and keep it up to date and you should be fine, and most of all not just because viruses are mallicuous, back up your data, you can replace your computer, but the photos and the home videos of your toddler or pictures of loved ones are priceless, back them up, either on CD/DVD's a flash drive, or on another computer.