Your friend D@fit

This hoax warns that if you receive an email with the subject line "Your friend D@fit" damage will be done to your hard disk. Of course, this is untrue. The hoax has been seen distributed in Dutch and refers to an anti-virus vendor in an attempt to seem more credible.

Here is the text of the hoax:

Onderwerp: VIRUS!!!!!! Als je een e-mail ontvangt met als onderwerp "Your friend D@fit" moet je hem NIET openen. Je harde schijf wordt dan meteen gewist. Stuur dit mailbericht naar zoveel mogelijk mensen. Het is een nieuw, zeer kwaardaardig virus. Deze informatie werd bekendgemaakt door McAfee. Deel dit nieuws met iedereen in je adresboek, zodat de verspreiding van het virus kan worden stopgezet. Het is een zeer GEVAARLIJK virus en wordt op dit moment door nog geen enkel antivirusprogramma herkend. Dus niet openen !!! Service Centre Netforce and McAfee Netherlands

Many virus hoaxes:

• falsely claim to describe an extremely dangerous virus
• use pseudo-technical language to make impressive-sounding (but impossible) claims
• falsely claim that the report was issued or confirmed by a well-known company
• ask you to forward it to all your friends and colleagues

As usual, you are urged not to pass on warnings of this kind, as the continued re-forwarding of these hoaxes simply wastes time and email bandwidth.

It is possible that you may receive a hoax via email with a file attached. Obviously, such file attachments should be treated with caution as they may be virus infected. Sophos recommends deleting virus hoax emails, whether they contain file attachments or not.

Sophos suggests a policy to help prevent hoaxes from spreading in your company.