If we are looking for a way to save some time, one favor we might do our friends is checking out those "warnings" before passing them on. Here is an example of one that came to me from someone in our school system. Parts of the e-mail read as follows:
You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail with a Power Point presentation ' Life is Beautiful.' If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, and delete it immediately. If you open this 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 HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/mailserver.asp
The interesting thing is not only is this a hoax, but if the reader even clicked on the Snopes link, they would see that the link is about a totally different hoax anyway.
How long did it take me to determine this e-mail was a hoax? About 10 seconds. How did I know? I wrote about it in this post.
In a similar post, I talked about a hoax that almost hooked me, and why educators should be the least likely to forward hoaxes. You can read about it by clicking here.
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