Email Scams, Hoaxes, And Worms - This Is A Late Friday Post.

Not a day goes by where someone doesn’t email you an email with specific instructions for good luck. “Email this to 400 people in your address book and you will have good luck for the next year. But, if you ignore it, a Scandinavian cockroach will molest you."

And then there’s the “SoBig,” and “MSBlaster” worms, that wiggle their way through your connection and rape your computer’s hard drive.

And of course, who can forget the recent email sent to people with the subject line, “Vital Microsoft Update”. Should have clued people in that it was sent to POP3 accounts.

I have spent hours of time thinking about what reasons could prompt any human being to sit down and write a hoax email, worm, or Virus, and I’ve come to this educated conclusion. People are assholes.

Hoax emails are my favorite because they require thought and creativity. A few examples of this:

*The US Post Office is making a commerative Muslim Stamp! Remember September 11th? Remember Iraq? Blah blah blah? Mail this to everyone you know! Let’s stop this!!!

Ok. This one is dumb because it’s worded badly. An obvious racist also writes it. While I personally hold the belief that 90% of the Islamic population hates anyone who isn’t Muslim based on things I’ve read from their own bible, the Koran, I also don’t believe this email. First of all, the Post Office is wise enough to know this would piss most of the population off since most of us believe the nation of Islam hates us. Secondly, this guy obviously has an axe to grind, and he wasn’t smart enough not to let it show in his email.

*If you email this to 1000 friends, a $30.00 gift certificate will pop up on your screen for Outback Steak house. (also Steakloft, TGI Fridays, Applebee’s, or a pop culture-esque restaurant in your area.)

This one is particularly dumb because there is no way to trace email from one user to another. Yet, this one never goes away. And someone always falls for it. It’s also dumb because the number of people you have to email it to almost always exceeds 50.

*Subj: Better Send This Along! Not Cool! Found It On My PC. Text: If you search your computer, you will find a program called Watson.exe on your computer. It’s set to run on 1/1/2004 (or whenever). When you find it, delete it. I searched all of my computers and it was on every one!

This one annoys me. This was obviously written by some computer savvy dork that hasn’t had a date since the stock market crash of 1984. He thinks its hysterical to get people to delete non critical windows installed programs that have some very obscure and un-important task. Tee-hee. The program itself varies, but the threat is always the same. It will run on a certain date, and your computer will explode into flames.

Yeah. These idiots have no life. What’s depressing is how many people they are able to fool. I can say with every degree of honesty, they have not fooled me in at least 5 years; I’ve only been using the net for 6.