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| Users urged not to foward chain letters to their
friends and family. |
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global
network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned
users not to fall for a chain letter that is spreading across the
internet, claiming that lipstick causes cancer.
Sophos technical support has received an increasing number of
reports of the Lipstick
chain letter from concerned computer users in the last few
days. The emails claim that some brands of lipstick contain a
dangerously high level of lead which can cause cancer.
However, Cancer Research UK has confirmed that the email's claims are not true, and
Sophos advises that users should simply delete the email, and not
forward it onto their friends and colleagues.
"Chain letters like this are too easily forwarded to friends,
family and colleagues without people using their common sense.
Stories like this become urban legends, constantly being repeated
without anyone bothering to check the facts," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "Hoaxes and chain letters like
this are not harmless - they waste time and bandwidth, and can be a
genuine headache for support departments. Users need to be more
skeptical, and ask themselves whether everything they are told by
email can be believed."
Part of the chain letter reads as follows:
The higher the lead content, the greater
the chance of causing Cancer. After doing a test on lipsticks, it
was found that the Y.S.L. lipstick contained the most amount of
lead. Watch out for those lipsticks which are supposed to stay
longer. If your lipstick stays longer, it is because of the higher
content of lead. Here is the test you can do yourself:
1. Put some lipstick on your hand.
2. Use a Gold ring to scratch on the lipstick.
3. If the lipstick colour changes to black then you know the
lipstick contains lead.
Please send this information to all your girlfriends, wives and
female family members.
The full text of the chain letter can be found here.
Sophos has made available a series of free, constantly updated
RSS feeds which enable users to always find
out about the latest viruses, hoaxes and chain letters.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.