Letter from Andy Lurig
Stage 1: Some Basic Facts
- A virus is a program, just like your Netscape, IE, or AOL. You have to RUN it (in today's operating systems that's pretty much a double click) for it to work.
- Emails are just text. Some include HTML (the language used to create webpages) and some are in MIME format (you might see that at the top of some messages) which is just an advanced text. Since an email is only text, and not a program, just READING or OPENING an EMAIL can not start a virus.
- The only way to get a virus in an email is as an attachment. If you don't download the attachment (no matter how tempting it may be), you can't get the virus. Period.
- Also, since an email is only text, there is no such thing as a TRACKING PROGRAM. It's not possible. The only people who can track when someone opens an email sent by someone else is AOL, and this is only if the email is sent from one AOL user to another. This is because the emails and everything is saved on the AOL network, and they are aware of every detail because they are in control of it all.
- Simply by forwarding an email to 10 people, nothing is going to 'pop-up' such as Southpark lost episodes. The email isn't sentient, and doesn't know or care to whom or how many times your forward it.[NEXT]