I got an email about a new virus that will delete everything on my computer. What should I do?

While it is true that viruses can be spread through emails, and we should always be alert to the content of emails, these types of emails are a hoax. They falsely inflate the potential danger of these types of viruses in order to get you to flood the Internet with copies of these emails. Viruses have never been known to "destroy everything on the computer" because that goes against the real intent of today's viruses, which is to infect your computer in order to abuse your computer and Internet connection for financial gain. If viruses destroyed everything on your computer, it would render the computer useless for the virus' intended purposes. In fact, if this happened, your system would need to be wiped clean and everything reloaded, eliminating the virus in the process. That would not be very beneficial for the virus authors.

These emails have probably been circulating around the Internet via forwarded emails for several years. These hoaxes refuse to die because people just keep forwarding them on to all of their friends and families. They typically claim that snopes.com has authenticated their validity and threat potential. In sharp contrast, snopes.com documents the hoax nature of these types of emails while acknowledging the potential dangers from email-borne viruses. I suspect some people even receive and forward the same emails from time to time, without thinking about what they're reading and sending. It becomes a knee-jerk reaction to just forward them because it's easy to think that it's free to send emails. Well, the cost of forwarding these hoax emails can be measured in real dollars, in terms of the time lost to deal with them and the system resources wasted on transmitting and storing them.

It does no good to propagate these types of emails, so delete them and move in order to save us all the headaches.

The smartest course of action is to always keep your computer protected with the latest security patches from the operating system vendor, and install quality anti-virus software from a reputable vendor and keep it updated with the latest virus signature updates. If you need help with these steps, PC Backup provides this type of service for customers in our local area. You can call us at (937) 478-7624 or submit an inquiry through the Contact Us form on this web site.

This Q&A was found on PC Backup Online : http://www.pcbackuponline.com/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=15