Starship Asterisk*

Snopes: YouTube/Facebook Virus wrote:Outdated
...
Variations: In an attempt to trick people into believing the invitation virus hoax was real, in November 2011 those propagating the hoax "helpfully" provided within the body of the e-mail decrying the non-existent threat a link to this snopes.com article, which is about an actual virus (albeit a now outdated one).

Snopes: Invitation Hoax wrote:Hoax

Read-up before you panic.

'Invitation Facebook' Virus Alert Is a Hoax
about.com | Urban Legends | 2011 Oct 12

Invitation FB Olympic Torch Virus Hoax
Hoax-Slayer | last updated 2011 Oct 28

Olympic Torch (virus hoax)
Wikipedia | last updated 2012 Jan 10

bystander wrote:

Snopes: YouTube/Facebook Virus wrote:Outdated
...
Variations: In an attempt to trick people into believing the invitation virus hoax was real, in November 2011 those propagating the hoax "helpfully" provided within the body of the e-mail decrying the non-existent threat a link to this snopes.com article, which is about an actual virus (albeit a now outdated one).

Snopes: Invitation Hoax wrote:Hoax

Read-up before you panic.

Thanks, bystander. I should have checked first.
(Feel free to delete all.)

As a former Computer Systems Security Administrator, I used to get these all the time. Most of the time they are hoaxes, but it is always a good idea to check. Urban Legends, Hoax-Slayer, and Snopes are all good sources, but you should read carefully what they are telling you.

Such simple exploitation of our primitive instincts wreaks such havoc...

Deja vu! I got the same email warning a week ago! I wonder how stuff like that gets started? I do check out such warnings though.

orin stepanek wrote:Deja vu! I got the same email warning a week ago! I wonder how stuff like that gets started? I do check out such warnings though.

A good hoax is too good to be allowed to go to waste.

I used to be active at another forum dedicated to something else, and while I won't say what it was, I can say that there were a lot of women there. Many of them were Americans, and some of them were housewives (maybe home-makers is the proper term), and a few of them were home-schooling their children.

Anyway. One of these women, who was an interesting person and and a talented story-teller, once told everyone at this forum that she was going to teach her kids astronomy this year for a change. Normally she didn't think astronomy was very interesting, and her kids didn't much care, but she had just heard from another mom who was home-schooling her children that Mars would grow as big and bright as the full Moon this year, so of course she had to tell her children about the "second full Moon" they were going to see in the sky. I felt compelled to tell this woman in public (since she had told her crazy story in public) that Mars would look no more impressive than a bright star, and that it will never, ever come close to rivalling the Moon in our skies. I told her, too, that if Mars ever got as close to us to look that big and bright, then we could wave good-bye to life on Earth, since the consequences would be totally catastrophic.

The funny thing is that this happened at a time when the Mars Hoax had been around and come and gone at least three times before. So I guess I learnt this from my experience at that other forum: A good hoax is too good to be allowed to go to waste, because you can always resurrect it.

Ann

Good thing I don't use Facebook.

TNT wrote:Good thing I don't use Facebook.

I don't use it either! I guess I really don't feel I have a need for it.

Ann wrote:I used to be active at another forum dedicated to something else, and while I won't say what it was, I can say that there were a lot of women there. Many of them were Americans, and some of them were housewives (maybe home-makers is the proper term), and a few of them were home-schooling their children.

Diets? Shoes? Autism vaccine conspiracy?