I received the email below from a friend this morning and wanted to share with as many as I could!

Anyone-using Internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived this morning, Direct from both Microsoftand Norton Please send it to everybody you know who has Access to the Internet. You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail titled "Here you have it" If you open the file, a message will appear on your screen saying: 'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful....'

Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person who sent it to you will gain access to your Name, e-mail and password. This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon. AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus software's are not capable of destroying it.

The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself 'life owner'.

PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, And ask them to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY .

THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES.


www.snopes.com/computer/virus/hereyouhave.asp

Actually, if you read the snopes article you'd know that it's not as bad as all that. If you click the links in these "Here you have it" e-mails and then download and run the associated file, you'll get an e-mailer worm that sends out the same e-mail to everyone on your address list... but it's definitely not going to wipe all your data or show any threatening popup messages.

Be careful about the e-mail you open, anyway. If you don't recognize the sender, don't follow links or download documents you receive.

I'm glad it's not as bad as all that. I'm not technical, really. The friend that sent it is a technical person and because it was from her, I figured I would let as many people as I could know.

It's cool, I'm not a very technologically savvy person myself. Thanks for the warning! It's always better to be safe than sorry, right?

I really do appreciate the sentiment behind it C:

Thanks for the warning. Just a few points of added caution about receiving emails.

If you recieve an email:
1 - And it's from someone you either don't know, a strange and unfamiliar email address, and or looks like SPAM, don't open it, delete it
2 - If the email is from someone you don't know, and has attached files to it with endings such a '.exe' don't open it, delete it. If you open that .exe file it's a type of program or executable file that likely has a virus in it. Avoid infection and delete it.
3 - If you get SPAM that has attachable files, delete it, do not open it.

Phishing Emails
1 - If you receive an email that looks like the genuine article and the email tells you to that there's some kind of problem with your user-account, and gives you a link to go straight to the website and login be very careful.
2 - If there are misspellings of words in the email, it's a fake, delete it.
3 - If the email asks for login details such as a username and or a password, and expressly requests that you go to a website, and login, than check the links in the email by running your mouse cursor over it. If the address doesn't match the website address of the site that you use. It's likely to be a fake. Do not click on those links.
4 - Why? The person that sent you the email could possibly be trying to collect your username, and password details so that they can 'hack' into your account, this is called 'Phishing' and many people have been caught in the past by it.

My advice is to delete the email, and go to the proper website that you have an account on, and to check their news bulletins. If there is an issue it'll likely be broadcast on the website in some way, shape or form. Do not trust emails that ask you for login details, ever, be sensible. If you cannot identify who has sent you the email, if it has suspicious attachments, is SPAM, or asks you for personal details of any kind, be very wary.

~ Pyre

If you use Outlook 2003 sp2 (or a more recent version) you can also use your junk mail folder. The junk mail folder will convert any html emails to plain text, so if you must open a suspicious looking email to see what's inside, send it there first. As previously said, NEVER click on any links in the email.

Also, watch out for any emails with the subject "your package has arrived". The email address will look like it's from UPS, but is not. The links in the email will infect your computer. The company I support had a whole bunch of these emails received last month. Nothing to panic over though, if you're smart about it.

Note: Outlook as mentioned above is not the same as Outlook Express. The junk mail folder to my knowledge is only something available with the MS Office install.