one of my favorite workplace distractions (after woman-watching, of course) is checking my email. i have my cc:mail work account set up to beep, flash, & pop up a dialog box whenever i receive a message so i can be sure to get it as quickly as possible. i check my personal geocities account pretty often as well, far more frequently than is warranted by the trivial amount of email i receive (& i'd probably check it even more often if i didn't have to open up netscape & wait 2 minutes for it to check every time). it's really the perfect diversion; i get to stay at my desk, typing away at my computer and seeming to the casual observer to be actually working! of course, probably more email than not is disappointing: boring corporate announcements about the company that don't in any way involve me, so-called jokes that aren't actually funny, or junk mail.

but periodically i receive the dread virus warning. panic!, they tell me in so many words! your computer will be destroyed! eaten alive from the inside like so much cheddar! don't ever open a file again! the messages'd be even scarier if any of them were legitimate.

well, okay, every once in the world i'll get a virus warning that's on the level. a few weeks back i was warned about the new melissa virus. back when i worked in the computer labs, i received updates on how to combat the word macro concept virus. but as my memory serves me, those were the only 2 virus warnings i've ever gotten that were for real.

far more often come the hoaxes. the rampant fear of viruses (virii?) is so widespread that all a prankster need do is invent a name & fill in the blanks. there's already a form in circulation. here it goes for a hypothetical virus i just made up called hahahasucker.

virus alert: someone on the internet has released a new virus called hahahasucker. this is a new, very malicious virus that not many people know about. hahahasucker can erase your hard drive and allow unauthorized access to your computer by someone on the internet. do not open any emails if the subject contains the word "the", "a", "and", "if", "or", "but", "when", "where", "why", "in", "on", or "hahahasucker". this is how the virus spreads. delete any messages with any of those words in the subject.

this information was just released yesterday by microsoft. aol has said that there is no known way to combat this virus. please distribute this message to absolutely everyone you know.

now don't panic! i made all that up! it's not real! but does it sound familiar? i bet it does. all the hoaxes sound just like that. it's not verbatim, as i had to write it from memory, & some of them fancy it up by adding or subtracting little bits here & there. but there are keywords you can look for which will tell you immediately if the virus is a hoax. i've seen these key lines in every virus hoax i've ever received. one is the line: "this is a new, very malicious virus that not many people know about." this is another way of saying "this is a fake made-up virus that i'm trying to trick you into believing in." another is the line about the info being released yesterday by microsoft. i've never heard of microsoft announcing the existence of a real virus. does microsoft even have any antivirus software? i doubt it, since they threw everything else they could think of (including the kitchen sink) into windows 98. but maybe they do; whatever.

now you shouldn't feel bad if you've fallen for one or all of these virus hoaxes, even spreading the word on to others. it's a newbie trap; these notes are designed to scare you. just about everyone is bound to fall for them in the beginning. even i have once or twice (although i only remember once). what's important is stemming the flow of such paranoid lies. the makers of every decent antivirus program have complete listings of real viruses & virus hoaxes on their web pages. personally i go to the symantec page, www.symantec.com (note: symantec is not paying me to endorse their web site or their norton antivirus product). but really you can go to just about any of them & find the info. if you receive a virus warning, go to one of these pages & check before spamming all your friends. chances are, hahahasucker or whatever will be right up at the top of the virus hoax list.

these hoaxes really should be stopped, & awareness is the cure. i honestly have no idea why the stupid things get distributed in the first place. what's the point? what purpose could such lies possibly serve? where's the reward? you never have any contact with your victims; as far as i know there's not even a way to be sure your hoax is working. viruses are stupid enough. you have to be one sick prick to want to write a virus & release it into the world. but at least when creating real viruses there's a challenge involved: creating the best, most easily distributable virus around. but there's no challenge in inventing a stupid name & sending out spam. if you have to be a demented psycho to create a virus (which i think is a tautology) then you must be a pathetic wannabe-psycho to create a virus hoax, especially since they all have virtually identical warnings. there's no point at all to such an activity.

so be on the lookout; there're a lot of bored idiots out there who want to mislead you for no good reason. don't believe the hype. don't act like cattle in a roundup. & don't believe everything you read simply because it says "warning" or "alert". you might just end up looking like a sucker... or a hahahasucker.