I got an interesting e-mail from my sister Nancy yesterday. It served to reinforce my conviction that Web hoaxes are something of a rite of passage for new users. My sister’s an intelligent woman. She makes a mean tuna casserole, knows how to change a flat, and can spell better than most folks. But like many new computer users, she’s gullible about the stuff that ends up in her virtual mailbox.

The subject of Nancy’s message was, “VIRUS ALERT! BUD FROGS!” It contained a warning about a “very desirable screensaver” that “someone” was sending out. “But if you download it,” warned the message in frenzy-inducing tones, “you will lose everything!!! Your hard drive will crash!!!” Furthermore, “If you download, some jerk from the internet will get your screen name and password!”

Panic spreads on the Internet like sunscreen on a fried haole. My sister Nancy had forwarded this message to me (and seven other people) after my Aunt Nita sent it to her. Nita had sent it to Nancy (and nine other people) after receiving it from a woman who had sent it to forty-five of her closest cyber-friends. This one message had snowballed through the front yards of almost a hundred people - including, I noted with amusement, a woman whose e-mail address was at Anheuser-Busch.com.

Seasoned veterans often rush to condemn new users for pressing the panic button when they receive e-mail “virus” messages. But let’s think about this for a moment. Let’s pretend that refrigerators are a recent invention, and that you just bought your own a couple months ago. You come home from work, grab your mail and a frosty beverage from your shiny new fridge, sit down at the kitchen table, and start going through the envelopes.

Bill, bill, catalogue, letter from Auntie Helen in Seattle... what’s THIS?!?? A notice that says, “Don’t open your vegetable bin under any circumstances! Somebody is sending bombs that will blow up your house if you open the vegetable bin in your new refrigerator. Please contact all of your friends and tell them not to open THEIR vegetable bins.” I don’t know about YOU, but it this happened to me, I’d probably get on the phone and tell everybody in the phone book to beware of brussels sprouts and broccoli.

Stop The Plague

Keep in mind, folks, that virus hoaxes, contest hoaxes, and dying kid hoaxes on the Internet generally contain one or more of the following:

1. Technical sounding language. Remember the Good Times "virus"? "...If the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity infinite binary loop which can severely damage the processor..." Pretty impressive, huh? This is probably the most successful hoax of all time. It's been around since 1994, and keeps cycling through the ranks of new users, even though it's impossible for a virus to do what the Good Times virus is supposed to be able to do.
2. Credibility by association. The Bud Frogs message says, "This is a new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it. This information was announced yesterday morning from Microsoft."
3. "Send this message to all of your friends..."
4. Misspellings, grammatical errors, capitalization, and/or more exclamation points than last month's issue of Cosmopolitan!!!
5. No date information, no names, invalid phone numbers, non-existent addresses. Before I could set her straight about the funhouse world of the cyberhoax, Nancy sent me another message, purportedly written by Timothy Flyte, some kid with "ostriopilosis of the liver". The message says, "Valley Childrens hospital has agreed to donate 7 cents to the National Diesese (sic) Society for every name on this letter. Please send it around as much as you can." There is no such thing as National Disease Society. In fact, there's no such thing as ostriopilosis of the liver!
6. A statement that the FCC has issued a warning about the virus. The FCC does not issue virus warnings. They never have, and they never will.
7. Dire warnings ("DON'T DOWNLOAD THIS FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!") or grandiose promises ($5,000 and a free trip to Disneyworld!)

I continued, “You can also do an online search for words or a certain character string that appear in the virus warning. I did an AltaVista search on ‘bud frogs virus hoax’, and that's how I found the URLs that I sent to you.” I also suggested that she send another message to the people on her original list, telling them that the warning was just a hoax, and recipients shouldn't forward it to anybody else. Though I suppose this virus will be in circulation forever, perhaps my sister can prevent her friends from sending it to their friends.

As society evolves, so do its legends. Once we clucked our tongues and shook our heads over alligators in the sewers, the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe, Craig Shergold, organ theft, and Richard Gere and his poor gerbil. Now we’ve got PenPal Greetings, Bill Gates’ beta e-mail tracking, and Deeyenda Maddick. Stop the madness, folks! Don’t just forward an e-mail message without doing some homework. Challenge and check whatever you read.

Caroline Wright, of WRIGHT FOR YOU Word Services, is a freelance writer. A former resident of Hawaii, she now lives in rural South Carolina. Feel free to e-mail your comments to Caroline at cw@wrightforyou.com.