Many users experienced signifcant losses from several viruses earlier this year and it is easy to get scared when the word is even mentioned. We must, however, not over-react. Information about real viruses is promulgated through media channels. Internet service providers, internet and software news groups, the news media, and corporate information system managers are advised by CIAC and antivirus software manufacturers. Chain letter advisories of hoaxes are a tremendous cost to all users in wasted time, e-mail system clutter, and internet bandwidth. They should never be posted a listserver. When hearing of a virus, the first thing I do is go to the Symantec web site for more info. Here's what they said last May about california/wobbler: WOBBLER Virus Hoax VirusName: WOBBLER Virus Hoax Aliases: none Known Variants: Hoax Infection Length: Hoax Area of Infection: Hoax Likelihood: Hoax Region Reported: email Keys: Hoax Description: This information is a hoax and should be ignored. Sample of hoax message: Dear All, For your reference, take necessary precautions. If you receive an email with a file called California, do not open the file. The file contains WOBBLER virus. WARNING This information was announced yesterday morning from IBM; AOL states that this is a very dangerous virus, much worse than "Melissa", and that there is NO remedy for it at this time. Some very sick individual has succeeded in using the reformat function from Norton Utilities causing it to completely erase all documents on the hard drive. It has been designed to work with Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. It destroys Macintosh and IBM compatible computers. This is a new, very malicious virus and not many people know about it. Please ignore any messages regarding this "hoax" and do not pass on any messages regarding it. Passing on messages about this hoax serves only to further propagate it. Write-up by: Motoaki Yamamura Updated: May 15, 1999 ##### >>> "Gabe Cherian" <[log in to unmask]> 07/29/99 02:57PM >>> Hi Friends: I just received the message below. I am passing it on to for whatever it is worth. I suspect there could be some truth to it. You be the judge. Just FYI. Regards. Gabe -----Original Message----- From: Farid Sabounchi <[log in to unmask]> To: 'Dan Koch' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Dave Aarant' <[log in to unmask]>; 'David Newth' <[log in to unmask]>; 'David Senum' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Dennis Sheredy' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Gabe Cherian' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Gary Herd' <[log in to unmask]>; 'George Schanck' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Harry Allen' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Jack Turner- Teccor' <[log in to unmask]>; [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>; 'Joe Levesque' <[log in to unmask]>; 'John Stabley' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Laura Miraglio' <[log in to unmask]]>; 'Richard Denyer' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Ronnie Chua' <[log in to unmask]>; 'Steve Dale' <[log in to unmask]>; 'VanCleave, Stacey' <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thursday, July 29, 1999 9:35 AM Subject: FW: New Virus *****IMPORTANT***** <snip> ############################################################## TechNet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ############################################################## To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TECHNET <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TECHNET ############################################################## Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information. If you need assistance - contact Gayatri Sardeshpande at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5365 ##############################################################