See below...
MrDon Roberts wrote:
>
> Hello All!
> I need your help. A friend of mine just recieved an e-mail saying that we
> would be charged for sending e-mail. I know this is bull, and am trying to
> convince her of that. I know this and many other of its type has gone around
> here recently. Someone had posted a web address here to confirm that it was
> a hoax. If you could please repost so I can forward to my friend I would be
> very grateful.
> Thanks in advance
>
> Don Roberts
> mrdonr@hotmail.com
>
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
Don, Check this stuff out - you should have enough ammo to
convince her!
Brian
Issue:
Congress will be voting (in less than two weeks) to decide
whether or not telephone companies can levy a charge on your
phone bill equal to a long distance call EACH time you
access the Internet.
Well,
Thanks for thinking of us, but this is actually a hoax...
Check out
http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa012099.htm?pid=2733&cob=home
for details...
Basically, anything and everything that says "pass this on
to all of your friends" is a hoax, unfortunately.
*************
Internet Access Rumor Won't Go Away
Dateline: 01/20/99
Even though it's been debunked by just about everybody, the
rumor rages
on via forwarded email alerts: the U.S. government, we are
told, is on the
verge of enacting legislation that will raise our Internet
access costs by
allowing calls to ISPs to be charged at long-distance
(i.e., per-minute)
rates.
The rumor is false, as I will explain shortly.
It is nonetheless popular, exemplifying a genre of Internet
folklore dating
back to the " modem tax" legend of the early '90s. The
rumor then was that
the FCC was about to approve a surcharge on all phone lines
connected
to computer modems. A grassroots email campaign resulted in
a flood of
protests to the FCC, in spite of the fact that it had no
such ruling under
consideration.
In similar fashion, the latest rumor has generated hundreds
of thousands of
email complaints from "well-meaning but misinformed people"
over the
past two years, says the FCC.
Much like the issue of computer security, which has given
rise to a body of
lore including virus hoaxes, hacker alerts, and rumors of
privacy invasion,
low-cost access is and will likely always be a "hot button"
topic among
Internet users, hence fertile ground for rumormongers.
False rumors often
paint a true picture of a community's deep-seated fears and
concerns.
Here's a typical email rendering of the current one:
Date: Tuesday, January 05, 1999 7:50 PM
Subject: INPORTANT!!! PLEASE READ!!!!!!
THIS IS NO JOKE !!!
CNN stated that the Government would in two weeks
time decide to allow or not allow a Charge to
your phone bill equal to a long distance call
each time you access the internet.
The address is
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Please visit the address above and fill out the
necessary form! This is not a joke....but REAL.
We all were aware that the Government has been
pressured by the telephone companies to consider
such a charge and now it's reality.....
If EACH one of us, forward this message on to
others in a hurry, we may be able to prevent this
injustice from happening!
The irony is that similar messages warning that the
government will make a
decision "in two weeks" have been circulating since early
November, more
than two months ago.
The earliest of these coincides with news reports about a
ruling under
consideration by the FCC (not Congress) pertaining to
"reciprocal
compensation" arrangements between local telephone
companies. The
ruling (still pending at this writing) will decide whether
calls to ISPs
should
be regarded as interstate transactions, since Internet
traffic is not,
strictly
speaking, local. It would only affect the rates phone
companies charge
each other for the use of local lines to complete such
calls. (See the FCC
Fact Sheet on this issue for a more thorough explanation.)
In some quarters, including news organizations such as CNN,
this was
misinterpreted as having an impact on the rates phone
companies charge
ISPs, and thus on consumer access fees. As CNN ominously
reported on
November 7, "The cost of going online could go up
significantly if the
Federal Communications Commission decides that dialing your
local
Internet provider is a long-distance call."
It was an erroneous assumption. FCC chairman William
Kennard had
announced the opposite just the day before: "The FCC has
repeatedly
stated for the past decade and is stating again today
that it is NOT
repealing the ISP exemption that [prevents] Internet
service providers from
paying per-minute charges to local telephone companies."
Unfortunately, the rumor was well underway. Even now, in
spite of plenty
of information to the contrary on this site and elsewhere,
people persist in
believing the email alerts and continue forwarding them
hither and yon with
righteous indignation.
Two days ago, the Arizona Republic reported that
Congressman Ed
Pastor had received no fewer than 85 messages of protest
since
November, the bulk of them during the past two weeks.
Pastor's office
responds to the protests by kindly denying the rumor and
handing out the
address of the FCC Web page listed above. Other members of
Congress
are doing the same, and likely will be for quite some time
to come.
"Internet misinformation resembles one of those fires that
start up in huge
piles of tires," observed the author of the Arizona
Republic article. "You
can knock them back, but never really put them out."
The FCC can vouch for that. Come to think of it, so can I.
For more information, see:
No Consumer Per-Minute Charges to Access ISPs
Dec. '98 Fact Sheet from the FCC
FCC Chairman's Statement
Nov. 11 speech to Regulatory Commissioners
FCC Again Says It Won't Tax Internet
Reuters news coverage, Nov. 7, 1998
Internet Access Fees (Again?) (NOT!)
David Spalding's in-depth 'Hoax du Jour' feature
How to Identify a Hoax
There are several methods to identify virus hoaxes, but
first consider what makes a successful hoax on the Internet.
There are two known factors
that make a successful virus hoax, they are: (1) technical
sounding language, and (2) credibility by association. If
the warning uses the proper
technical jargon, most individuals, including
technologically savy individuals, tend to believe the
warning is real. For example, the Good Times
hoax says that "...if the program is not stopped, the
computer's processor will be placed in an nth-complexity
infinite binary loop which can
severely damage the processor...". The first time you read
this, it sounds like it might be something real. With a
little research, you find that there
is no such thing as an nth-complexity infinite binary loop
and that processors are designed to run loops for weeks at a
time without damage.
When we say credibility by association we are referring to
whom sent the warning. If the janitor at a large
technological organization sends a
warning to someone outside of that organization, people on
the outside tend to believe the warning because the company
should know about
those things. Even though the person sending the warning may
not have a clue what he is talking about, the prestige of
the company backs the
warning, making it appear real. If a manager at the company
sends the warning, the message is doubly backed by the
company's and the
manager's reputations.
Individuals should also be especially alert if the warning
urges you to pass it on to your friends. This should raise a
red flag that the warning may
be a hoax. Another flag to watch for is when the warning
indicates that it is a Federal Communication Commission
(FCC) warning. According to
the FCC, they have not and never will disseminate warnings
on viruses. It is not part of their job.
Validate a Warning
CIAC recommends that you DO NOT circulate virus warnings
without first checking with an authoritative source.
Authoritative sources are your
computer system security administrator or your computer
incident advisory team. Real warnings about viruses and
other network problems are
issued by different response teams (CIAC, CERT, ASSIST,
NASIRC, etc.) and are digitally signed by the sending team
using PGP. If you
download a warning from a team's web site or validate the
PGP signature, you can usually be assured that the warning
is real. Warnings without
the name of the person sending the original notice, or
warnings with names, addresses and phone numbers that do not
actually exist are
probably hoaxes.
Another area of concern is Internet chain letters that may
or may not be true. For more information on Internet chain
letters reference
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACChainLetters.html.
What to Do When You Receive a Warning
Upon receiving a warning, you should examine its PGP
signature to see that it is from a real response team or
antivirus organization. To do so,
you will need a copy of the PGP software and the public
signature of the team that sent the message. The CIAC
signature is available at the
CIAC home page: http://ciac.llnl.gov/ You can find the
addresses of other response teams by connecting to the FIRST
web page at:
http://www.first.org. If there is no PGP signature, see if
the warning includes the name of the person submitting the
original warning. Contact that
person to see if he/she really wrote the warning and if
he/she really touched the virus. If he/she is passing on a
rumor or if the address of the
person does not exist or if there is any questions about the
authenticity or the warning, do not circulate it to others.
Instead, send the warning to
your computer security manager or your incident response
team and let them validate it. When in doubt, do not send it
out to the world.
In addition, most anti-virus companies have a web page
containing information about most known viruses and hoaxes.
You can also call or
check the web site of the company that produces the product
that is supposed to contain the virus. Checking the PKWARE
site for the current
releases of PKZip would stop the circulation of the warning
about PKZ300 since there is no released version 3 of PKZip.
Another useful web site
is the "Computer Virus Myths home page"
(http://www.kumite.com/myths/) which contains descriptions
of several known hoaxes. In most cases,
common sense would eliminate Internet hoaxes.
EMAIL FACTS OF LIFE
1. Big companies don't do business via chain letter. Bill
Gates is not giving you $1000, and Disney is not giving you
a free vacation.
2. There is no baby food company issuing class-action
checks. You can relax; there is no need to pass it on "just
in case it's true." Furthermore, just because someone said
in the message, four generations back, that "we checked it
out and it's legit," does not actually make it true.
3. There is no kidney theft ring in New Orleans. No one is
waking up in a bathtub full of ice, even if a friend of a
friend swears it happened to their cousin. If you are
insistent on believing the kidney-theft ring
stories, please see:
http://urbanlegends.tqn.com/library/weekly/aa062997.htm
And I quote: "The National Kidney Foundation has repeatedly
issued requests for actual victims of organ thieves to come
forward & tell their stories. None have. That's "none," as
in "ZERO". Not even your friend's cousin.
4. Neiman Marcus doesn't really sell a $200 cookie recipe.
And even if they do, we all have it. And even if you don't,
you can get a copy at:
http://www.bl.net/forwards/cookie.html
Then, if you make the recipe, decide the cookies are that
awesome, feel free to pass the recipe on. (But I hear they
stink.)
5. We all know all 500 ways to drive your roommates crazy,
irritate co-workers, gross-out bathroom stall neighbors, and
creep out people on an elevator. We also know exactly how
many engineers, college students, Usenet posters, and people
from each and every world ethnicity it takes to change a
light bulb.
6. Even if the latest NASA rocket disaster(s) DID contain
plutonium that went to particulate over the eastern
seaboard, do you REALLY think this information would reach
the public via an AOL chain-letter?
7. There is no "Good Times" virus. In fact, you should
never, ever, ever forward any email containing any virus
warning unless you first confirm it at an actual site of an
actual company that actually deals with virii. Try:
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
And even then, don't forward it. We don't care.
8. If your CC: list is regularly longer than the actual
content of your message, you're probably going to be
punished eternally. (Ever heard of BCC:?)
9. If you're using Outlook, IE, or Netscape to write email,
turn off "HTML encoding." Those of us on Unix shells can't
read it, and don't care enough to save the attachment and
then view it with a web browser, since you're probably
forwarding us a copy of the Neiman-Marcus Cookie Recipe
anyway.
10. If you still absolutely MUST forward that
10th-generation message from a friend, at least have the
decency to trim the eight miles of headers showing everyone
else who's received it over the last 6 months. It sure
wouldn't hurt to get rid of all the ">" that begin each
line. Besides, if it has gone around that many times, we've
probably already seen it.
11. Craig Shergold in England is not dying of cancer or
anything else at this time and would like everyone to stop
sending him their business cards. He apparently is also no
longer a "little boy" either.
As with any 'virus warning' though, I ask you don't take my
word for it. Please check it out for yourselves at:
http://www.avertlabs.com/public/datafiles/valerts/vinfo/va10185.asp
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