A considerable amount of bogus information about security threats and solutions is constantly being distributed on the Internet. Remember the warning about the "Budweiser frogs sceensaver" that circulated around the Internet several years ago? This warning, which proved to be a hoax, claimed that if you downloaded this screensaver, your system's hard drive would be erased. A recent hoax message says that you can immunize your system from Outlook worms by adding "!000" as the first entry in the Outlook address book. Making this the first entry in the Outlook address book really has only one advantage (a very small one at best) ---it can provide you with rapid notification (through an error message) in case of a worm infection that works through the address book. But adding this entry cannot immunize Outlook or any other program on your system, nor can it protect your system itself from worm infections. Keeping your anti-virus software up to date (see http://www.lbl.gov/ITSD/Security/vulnerabilities/), closing any unprotected shares (see http://www.lbl.gov/ITSD/Security/systems/ for procedures for deleting these shares in W9X systems), and ensuring that patches and hot fixes are installed (see http://www.lbl.gov/download/) are the best ways to prevent worm infections.

For more information about hoaxes visit:
http://www.lbl.gov/ITSD/Security/vulnerabilities/hoax.html