While it is true that it is annoying to receive multiple hoax warnings, and
that our IT departments should/will send out warnings, I seem to remember
that the original sender of the AnnaKournikova warning to the ABRF list
thought that they had received the virus through the list (which obviously
makes it reasonable to warn the list), and I also saw their AnnaKournikova
warning on the ABRF mail-list two days before our IT department sent
anything out, a lot of time for potential damage to occur in some cases.
Since there are always new people on this or any mail list, and new people
working in our labs, it will never be the case that everyone is up-to-date
on where to find good information on hoaxes vs. real viruses and what to do
about the real ones (like the addresses and good information contained in
Bob's message, and in the previous messages containing instructions on how
to deal with the AnnaKournikova virus).
If we make any kind of blanket rule about not posting such information,
while that will make our unread messages list a bit shorter for those of us
who don't need the information, it may remove a source of valuable
information for others who do need the information. Is it that much work to
just delete messages that aren't of interest, which all of us do anyway?
While I recognize the bandwidth issues involved in sending ANYTHING to a
mail list (including this message, I definitely hesitated), I hate to
discourage people who have gone the extra distance to provide what they feel
is useful and timely information to the general community (I'm not talking
about the chicken little types who forward every virus hoax to their entire
address book, but those who get reliable information about something and
then want to help others avoid or fix problems).
For the more computer-literate, a quick filter in any modern email program
will also auto-trash recurring subject messages we don't want to see (I do
this, for example, for anything that comes through the ABRF list with a
subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe" or any of the various misspellings I
have seen of those).
Bruce A. Stanley, Ph.D.
Director, Scientific Programs
Section of Technology Development and Research Resources H093
Penn State College of Medicine
> Bob Lyons wrote:
>
> I would appreciate it if people would avoid using this listserver to
> distribute
> virus discussions and/or warnings. I'm getting dozens of warnings already from
> various sources. You should each be getting virus warnings from your IT
> people,
> not a scientific forum. It's considered inappropriate to mass-mail virus
> warnings,
> since so many of them are hoaxes anyway (granted this one is not, but that
> doesn't
> change the premise).
>
> To check hoaxes (i.e. chain mail) see the CIAC web site
> (http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/)
> To learn about real viruses, either follow links from the CIAC web site
> (above)
> or go to Symantec (http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/) or Dr. Solomon's
> (http://www.drsolomon.com).
>
> Further virus discussions are appropriate on news:comp.virus or similar.
>
> Thanks for your consideration.
>
> Bob Lyons
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 23 2001 - 13:03:34 EST