Hoaxes

Hoaxes are false alerts about supposedly new viruses or worms.  Usually hoaxes will claim that the situation is urgent, that the information has been verified by some reputable company (which is untrue), and will prompt you to send the email on to as many people as possible.  Sometimes, hoaxes will tell you to delete a file because it is a virus file, when in fact it is a Windows system file or other needed, legitimate file.  If you receive a warning from a friend, family member, or other personal contact about a possible new virus, you can check a “hoax” site to see if it is a known hoax.  Alerts from ITS have been confirmed and will not be hoaxes.

Listing of hoaxes from Symantec (the maker of Norton Anti-Virus software)

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html

Listing of hoaxes from Network Associations (maker of McAfee Anti-Virus software)

http://vil.nai.com/vil/hoaxes.asp

Hoax information from Computer Associates, maker of various anti-virus products

http://www3.ca.com/Solutions/Collateral.asp?CID=37733&ID=