If you received an e-mail warning you not to answer your cellphone in certain circumstances, or "you will have to buy a new phone", you can relax. The warning, which apparently caused panic in Lebanon where it is thought to have originated, is another virus hoax.
ITWeb journalist Phillip de Wet investigated the hoax and discovered that you definitely shouldn`t believe all you read on e-mail.
"Attention!!! Now there is a virus on mobile phone systems. All mobile phones in a digital system can be infected by this virus," reads the e-mail, which you probably received from the same guy who always sends you those jokes.
Three exclamation marks must mean something serious. So you read further: "This virus will erase all IMIE and IMSI information from both your phone and your SIM card, which will make your phone unable to connect with the telephone network. You will have to buy a new phone. This information has been confirmed by both Motorola and Nokia."
Now panic sets in. Nokia and Motorola have confirmed it! What to do? But luckily the kind soul who authored the message has the answer. "If you receive a phone call and your phone displays `unavailable` on the screen, don`t answer the call. End the call immediately!!! Because if you answer the call, your phone will be infected by this virus."
Well that is easy enough. The next time the boss phones you with a really important assignment, and the screen says "unavailable", just don`t answer. Problem solved.
If you are not the type of person who checks for monsters under the bed every night, you may be a little suspicious at this point. All those exclamations indicate a semi-demented writer, and the long list of forwarding addresses seems out of place. Something is fishy here.
So what is your first reaction? Do you immediately forward this to everyone you know? If you are wise in the ways of the Internet, your first stop will be the Data Fellows anti-hoax page at http://www.datafellows.com/news/hoax/. And lo and behold, there is the exact same text, listed as a hoax. "There`s no virus capable of infecting cellphones and erasing SIM cards. Please ignore this warning and don`t pass it on," says Data Fellows.
But you are far too cynical to accept these assurances. Who knows, Data Fellows may be mistaken. What do they know about cellphones anyway? So you head over to the Nokia site (www.nokia.com). Surely the site will be able to clear things up. But the Nokia site has no glimmer of a warning.
The e-mail message also says "you can check this news at the CNN Web site". Okay, that should be a trustworthy source. A quick search on the site (www.cnn.com) yields one article: "Rumour of mobile phone virus panics Lebanese."
"The virus never hit, but the system crashed anyway. A fast-travelling rumour that the Chernobyl virus that melted down at least 600 000 computers..." says the story brief. You click on the headline to get the full story, but the only response is: "The requested object does not exist on this server."
By this time you are probably fed up with the whole thing. Sanity has had time to return, and you are probably convinced that a virus cannot get at your phone through the telephone system. But there is still a small, nagging doubt. What if...
Phone up Vodacom if you still find sleeping difficult. "There is no substance to this rumour. Use your cellphone as much as you like and listen to your e-mail with confidence," says Joan Joffe, group chief executive for Vodacom corporate affairs.
Never mind. Checking for monsters is always a good idea, and you sorted that one out soon enough. But if the virus hoax got you and you happily forwarded the mail to everyone you know, now would be a good time to start apologising. Because the virus doesn`t affect phones, it just makes you feel like an idiot.
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