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back to article Hoax Facebook virus makes more trouble than a real virus

A hoax Facebook virus is spreading rapidly across the social network. Many users have been hoodwinked into forwarding an inaccurate warning about the spread of non-existent malware that claims a girl committed suicide over a post her father wrote on her Facebook wall. No such tragedy has occurred but many are forwarding the …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    yeah

    "Surfers are advised to check out warnings with reputable sources before spreading them along."

    Yeah and while you're at it you can advise surfers to use common sense, a spell checker, and Google to find the answer to simple questions. You can also tell girls who suspect that they might be pregnant to get a fucking pregnancy test rather than ask the people on Yahoo Answers. Maybe you can tell people that the 4kb .exe in their inbox isn't a picture of a naked lady, and that no one can help them if they don't bother to read or write down the error message they saw.

    And then you can sigh when they come to you the next day with the following question "hi i mite be pregnunt can u confirm pls. ne way i got this error message can u fix it, sum 1 sent me porn but it didnt wurk. i updated my anti virus last year so it shud be fine innit. oh and can u tell me how meny pints r in a litre thx"

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  2. nickrw
    FAIL

    Numpties

    See title.

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  3. Shades

    I admit...

    ... I have a Facebook account yet none of my friends appear to have recieved such warning or, at least, have been stupid enough to spread it.

    That must be a first! ;)

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    1. /dev/me
      Reply Icon
      Badgers

      Heh

      Give it a couple of months.

      When you've forgotten all about reading this article and the time you took to comment on it, then you'll receive this tiding of a rampant virus loose on Facebook. Twice.

      And again a month later...

      ...you'll have it a dozen times before the end of 2012. But if I know anything, you'll not see the last of it before 2020.

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  4. Guido Esperanto
    Headmaster

    I like facebook

    only been using it a couple of months, but I got in touch with a few old school buddies and friends, which has been pretty cool.

    Whilst the technology allows people to get back in touch and keep in touch, it does not (and can not) help with the irks of human behaviour.

    One such irk is the mass propagation of total turdspurt. Urban Dictionary calls them "Status Sheep", who blindly copy the masses and re-post something, regardless of its authenticity.

    I suppose its the base human desire to belong to something.

    I call it an appropriate time for a cull. If these people are so stupid as to blindly follow a statement on faith, what do they do off the computer?

    Oh wait...thats religion :D

    In honesty, facebook is a tool, its the tools who use the tool we gotta be rid of.

    2 1
    1. Marvin the Martian
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      Thanks!

      Thanks for this quickstart to FaceBook. Can you also do a Sadville summary?

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    2. spillage
      Reply Icon

      We Must Act Now

      Im going to create and account right now. Just for the sake of sending out an email advising people that if they get this hoax email the must NOT forward it to anyone..........

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  5. OffBeatMammal

    Facebook waste of users time!

    shock! horror! close the internet! think of the children!

    this is just another stupid "Bill Gates is testing a new email system and will send you $2 for everyone you forward this to" email...

    Sadly on the internet this isn't akin to sticking your hand into a wasps nest to see if they're home... there is no feedback mechanism to teach people to apply common sense or at least visit Snopes

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  6. Fizzl
    FAIL

    Has the Internet learnt nothing!?

    It's ICQ all over again.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So tell me again....

    Just what is the difference between a "real" virus and something that merely wastes everyone's time. Wait: that could describe Facebook, couldn't it?

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    when will we get an email spam filter?

    that rejects messages based on ratio of upper to lower case characters.

    Would kill at least 95% of those" ATTENTION BENEFFICIARY" messages.

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  9. Cthonus
    Coffee/keyboard

    Mass effect

    The average user has just about learned not to step out in front of moving traffic but put a keyboard and screen in front of them with offers of cute fluffy animal pictures, or warnings that they're about to fall off the edge of the world and Darwin gets to turn in his grave.

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  10. Christian Cook
    Alert

    In some ways this is a virus...

    The wasted time that is caused where intelligent people have to wade through the same message copy and pasted in a huge status-stupidity-stack makes this as bad as a virus. Also, having to explain yet again to someone why they shouldn't forward everything just because someone said their toes would fall if they didn't is extremely annoying and can derail your train of thought from whatever bit of work you were trying to ignore in the first place.

    This sort of behaviour is viral and is the hacking equivalent of social engineering. It's more gullibility-engineering. So maybe we need a new phrase for a social virus spread by idiots with a damaging payload of stupidity.

    Google must have enough info on everyone by now to know their IQ. Perhaps everyone could have an app similar to anti-virus software that would filter out all email and web content below a certain level of intelligence. If you ever read something stupid anywhere then you would know that either:

    a) you need to update your IQ definitions

    b) you wrote it

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  11. Dom 3

    Good times!

    Funny how email hoax viruses died out when real ones came into existence. Will the same happen with facebook?

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  12. Dexter
    Happy

    Forwarding

    There's some pretty simple rules with these messages.

    If you get a message in ALL CAPS. Ignore it.

    If you get a message telling you to forward it to all your friends. Ignore it

    In fact, these rules are so useful you should forward them to all your friends.

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    1. Matt 13
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      TITLE

      thats a good idea... better put the thing in caps too so they notice it!!!!

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  13. Alan W. Rateliff, II
    Paris Hilton

    Facebook users fall for 10 year old email hoax

    News at 11!

    Paris, hoax!

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  14. John Tserkezis

    The meek? Hell no, it's the morons who will inherit the earth.

    Fading memoris of the "Good Times" virus.

    It managed to get through two of our sysadmins in two different offices before it found itself my way.

    Those two idiots where still working there when I was retrenched and moved on.

    Turned out later, managment wasn't too far off the IQ scale either.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      It is inevitable.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

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  15. The Envoy
    Happy

    Article inspires music listening

    Thanks for the article. Made me look up and listen to that great song "Emma" by Hot Chocolate!

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