What are “urban legends”? Urban legends are stories that have reached epic proportions on the Net, untrue stories that are forwarded from one person to the next to the next as “true.” In realty, they may have a basis of fact, but generally the only thing “true” about them is their ability to crowd our email boxes with total junk.

Have you heard the story that Bill Gates will send $1,000 and a copy of Win98 to the first 1000 people to write to him? Or, the story of the sick little boy who wants everyone around the world to send him email? Both are urban legends.

The first and only thing you should do when you open an urban legend is to delete it! Don’t send it to 52 of your closest friends, for them to send to 102 of their closest friends.

For more information about urban legends, visit The AFU & Urban Legends Archives. Be prepared for some interesting reading, like “Turkey Shoots Man,” or “Dead Baby Cocaine Smuggling.”

Another interesting website is the Urban Legends References Pages, where you can learn what urban legends are circulating right now. For example, there’s the story that HIV-infected needles are routinely being left in the seats at movie houses as traps for the unwary. False!

Not only do Net folks have urban legends to contend with, but we also have virus hoaxes. The “Good Times” and “Penpal Greetings” virus hoaxes have been going around for years. For one thing, you can’t get a virus from simply opening an email message. Viruses come as attachments to email messages, so only when you open an infected attachment can you get the virus. Your best bet is not to open any email attachments without running them through a reputable virus protection program.

For more information about virus hoaxes on the Net, visit the U.S. Department of Energy’s CIAC Internet Hoaxes website.

Additional information can be found at SARC – Virus Hoaxes.

Let’s close by including a brief statement about two real computer viruses/worms, happy99.exe and a relatively new one, Melissa. With Melissa, you’ll see a subject line of, “Important message from <users name>” with an attachment named list.doc. If you open the attachment, the worm will send 50 copies of itself to email addresses it finds from your own email address book. For more information about Melissa, visit: http://www.msnbc.com/news/253803.asp.

Happy99.exe works in much the same way, by attaching itself to email messages you send out. Unsuspecting recipients will open happy99.exe and see a lovely fireworks display, one that will promptly rename and modify their Winsock32.DLL file. For more information, visit: http://beta.nai.com/public/datafiles/valerts/vinfo/w32ska.asp

Robin Nobles is a freelance writer who can be reached at robinnobles@robinsnest.com.

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