If there is one type of spam I hate to receive more than any other, it is ”hoax e-mail virus” spam.
The reason this lies on top of my “hate-list” or “pet-peeve” list is because it usually comes from more or less trusted sources, meaning friends and family and similar. Thus it’ll sink right through your spam filter (if you have one) unless it is set up very rigiously and thus risking a high amount of false-positive.
The messages are usually very easy to spot, because they often try to seem genuine by referring to a well known news source. Others again are so silly to pretend to originate from said news source, or even from a well known anti-virus source (Symantec for example)
Almost all I’ve seen tell about “this is the worst, most evil and underhanded virus to ever be on the internet, and it is reported by <insert well known news source here>”.
There are also the devious ones which point you to a system file on your computer and tell you to remove said file if it is found, and sure enough – some delete their system file and can’t boot the computer.
It annoys me because people buy into these things. It shows that spam works, and that people aren’t using the same common sense as most of us would use in real life.
If your friend phones you up and tells you that he’s heard of a very contagious disease confirmed by cnn, and that you should phone 25 friends about it…. then I would like to think that few people would actually phone the other 25 people lest they first check it out, or if the friend is a doctor. Yet people do it with e-mails all the time.
I try to defuse the situation with replying back that it is a hoax, however you can easily be unlucky and receive many of these from multitude of your friends (reply all *arrrrgggg*) before common sense have migrated around.
If you ever receive an e-mail about a horrendously dangerous virus confirmed by “CNN”, “Symantec” or whatever and you must SPAM your friends with the message, do yourself a favor. Check it out before sending it, because as all chain letters, it is very annoying having to receive 10, 20, 30 or more mails about the same topic – especially when it is wrong.
It takes less than 2 minutes to actually search and confirm whether it is correct or not, and it will avoid making you look like a fool.