|
Just to be clear: There is always cause to be vigilant about potential threats, and an email like this one is definitely worth looking into by checking the records at the major antivirus sites. However, authorities don't usually rely on the public's use of forwarded emails as an effective way to spread information.
Warnings that come in forwarded emails (which, incidentally, are a great way for viruses to spread and for spammers to collect tons of free email addresses, thanks to the lengthy forward lists we like to leave in those messages) can easily be verified online.
And if an email says it was "verified with Snopes.com" (which is starting to happen a lot), don't take that as a fact either. Check it yourself...you'll often find that the Snopes record is exactly the opposite. If Snopes has it marked as a hoax, read up, have a good laugh, and delete the email. Hoaxes like this serve no purpose other than to breed paranoia about the scary things lurking on the net.
To get real virus warnings, I subscribe to the updates from Mcaffee, Norton, and Symantec, and I use an auto-updating antivirus program called Kaspersky (by far the best one I've seen to date).
|