This is an article I wrote back in high school. It was published in The Express, Taylor University Fort Wayne's student newspaper.
Have you gotten a computer virus warning over e-mail?
If so, you have been spammed.
What did you do when you got that e-mail warning of a virus?
Silly question. I already know what you did. You forwarded it. You sent it to everyone in your address book, right?
Do you complain about how slow the network is? Since you forwarded those messages you can't complain - you are causing the problem.
E-mail is the most common use of the Internet. But all the junk mail on the `net really slows things down. So if you want to improve the speed on the Internet - stop forwarding spam.
You have probably received a message warning about "Penpal Greetings," or "Goodtimes." You have received both of them, haven't you? When you got one of those warnings, if you read it carefully, you would have noticed that the date of the warning was in the past several months. That is a lie. Those e-mails have been circulating the `net for years. Those messages are the problem, not the viruses they warn of.
Oh, by the way, those virus warnings you sent to dozens of people are fakes.. Those "viruses" don't exist. If you knew how e-mail and computer viruses work, you would have realized that immediately. Viruses don't work the way these e-mails claim they do.
Viruses, Trojan Horses, and Worms are malicious programs written by crackers, phreaks and cyberpunks. These different types of files travel from computer to computer in different ways. A virus is a computer program that hides in other files, copies itself, and usually damages computers that it infects. Most people don't know enough to realize that there is a difference, and just call all of them viruses.
Even if s a virus is in an e-mail, just reading the message won't affect your computer. For a virus to travel by e-mail, it has to be in a file attachment. File attachments are a way of sending non-text messages via e-mail. The attached file could be a program, a wordprocessor document, or any other computer file. The attachment could contain a virus. But just reading the e-mail message won't affect your computer.
Stop spam! Speed up the `net! Do not forward virus warning e-mails. You can find some known fakes at Rob Rosenberger's Computer Virus Myths.