Dear friends and colleagues, INSTRAW members, You have probably recently received, as I have, a virus alert regarding some virus called 'A Virtual card for you.' Please note that not every email alert of that nature is necessarily true. Some such so-called virus alerts are just as menacing as though they were real, only because we believe them and waste time alerting our friends. Just so that you do not waste time sending 'hoax' virus alerts, please check two important sources regarding viruses as soon as you receive an alert, to see whether it is a serious virus or not [and do not open any attachment in the meantime]. Those are: www.news.com [where you would need to punch in a 'search' word for 'viruses', and, more importantly, the MacAfee site at http://216.49.88.12/anti-virus/ which has extensive virus information, even about hoaxes. It tells you not only if a virus alert is true, but also if it is not, and if you got infected, how you can remove the virus, and provides statistics on infections and gives a risk assessment. In fact, the explanation that 'a virtual card' is a hoax is found at their site at http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp? While hoaxes are harmless, they are menacing only in that they waste everyone's time. May God help us all... The best policy to always do is to NEVER open an attachment that has specifically an .exe extension, or any other extension that you are not familiar with, not to mention files sent to you from people you do not know. Even files sent to you from people you know, please open them after checking them for viruses with something like Norton Utilities or MacAfee. More importantly now, the real serious virus that is going around these days is called: "W32/SirCam@mm (Sir Cam Virus)" and you will find info on it at MacAfee also. It has a random title in the subject line of the message which may fool anyone. However it always has this message as text in addition to the attachment: "I send you this file in order to have your advice or I hope you can help me with this file that I send or I hope you like the file that I sendo you or This is the file with the information that you ask for" DO NOT OPEN IT. Just play safe and do not open attachments. To learn more about it, go to MacAfee's site. All the best to all of you. Be safe. Marlyn Tadros ===== Legal Research and REsource Center for Human Rights 7 Al-Higaz ST., Roxi, Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt Tel: 202-4520977 Fax: 202-259-6622 http://www.geocities.com/~lrrc __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/ This is GainsNet, the mailing list of the UN-INSTRAW-GAINS Network Members. To reply to the GainsNet group, click on "reply all" To reply to an individual, click on "reply" To unsubscribe from GainsNet, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line
