Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Please be Extremely Careful especially if using in

Just been sent this snippet, please be aware!

Please be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on.

This information arrived this morning direct from both Microsoft and Norton.

Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet.

You may receive an apparently harmless email with a Power Point presentation
'Life is beautiful.'

If you receive it DO NOT OPEN THE FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES , and delete it immediately .

If you open this file, a message will appear on your screen saying: 'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful.'

Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC and the person who sent it to you will gain access to your name, e-mail and password.

This is a new virus which started to circulate on Saturday afternoon.

AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the antivirus software's are not capable of destroying it.

The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself 'life owner.'

Lmao whats the difference between this virus and every one of the 2473652983659458748543 others in the wild? Okay it supposedly deletes all your data... but id love to see it happen. There are so many variables to consider that I doubt it would.

Simple fix: dont open any attatchment if you are not expecting it and dont know what it is.

bit harsh matty after all hoseman is passing on help to others.


Cheers Hoseman

Not harsh at all; 1000+ new virus's are created each day; some by people, some actually create themselves when they come into contact with others. Posts like this are made all the time by people, yet there is a cure that would eradicate the need for all these threads!!

Imho, if people are stupid enough to open an attatchment that they dont have a clue about its content or who it is from, they deserve to lose their data, because its people like that who cause 99% of problems on the internet anyway, spreading virus's etc cos they have no care for what they do on the net, what sites they visit, what emails they open. Most virus spam comes from end user machines that have been exploited, not from spam farms and the like!

I think the rule about not opening attatchments until you know they are safe and intended for you (ie. you know what the contents are and are expecting the attatchment) is simple enough, anyone who can't grasp it, quite frankly, shouldnt be using a computer...

And to add to that, half of the threads I see posted on different forums, warning others of virus's, are bullshit, cos they have actually been sent by spammers etc, another thing which does my head in!

And even myself as an internet professional sticks by this rule rigourously, even when I get an email with an attatchment from the most important of clients, which would usually come through to a private corporate-client-only email address, I check the attatchment first with Nod... if I am not expecting it, and it seems even the slightest bit dodgy, you know what, I email them to confirm that they sent it (well they intended to) and what the contents are.

The way I look at it:

- To email someone to confirm an attatchment - ~10 seconds
- To restore 250GB+ from local backups - Anywhere between 3 and 10 hours.
- To restore 250GB+ from remote backups in the scenario where the local backup integrity failed - Anywhere upto a week!!

Its a pretty clear choice to me. Theres no shame in staying safe.

As someone who has had a spate of hard drives randomly fail in the past, thanks to Acer using refurbished drives, its not much fun restoring from backups, even if they are local, I can assure you.

Why does anyone do anything then

The guys simply sending a heads up to us people who arent as amazing as you Matty on a computer. Nothing wrong with that at all and hoseman shouldnt take the flack about 1 of the many topics you read like this accross the whole internet.

I bet you cant say you've never opened an attachment without knowing what it is, we all have.

Dont worry - keep my gob shut in future!

Ahem, yes I can safely say that.

Why the hell would anyone want to open an attatchment if they dont have the faintest idea what it is?

This is exactly the SOLE problem with regards these virus's on the internet, people will NOT learn and are far far too complacent.

You dont have to be an internet whizz or the great man himself, Bill Gates, to realise that opening an attatchment, that you dont what it contains, poses a threat to the security of your computer, especially in this day and age where warnings even make headline TV news in some cases!!

I wont comment on this anymore as you clearly are having a bad day or in need of something removing. Hoseman, thankyou for the look out and please post any more potential threats that appear to have hit the headlines.

Correction; you won't comment on this anymore because you have no argument.

I have had a bad day? Thats a very impressive assumption to make. Tell me, are you a pretending to be psychic or something similar? Because if you are, id strongly recommend you change career, as actually, ive had a fantastic day, on all fronts.

Ah then you must always try and throw your opinion around.

I wont comment because I cannot be arsed trying to be apart of this topic. Good day to you

Hmmm it seems it was you of the opinion that I am having a bad day?

Good day to yourself too.

Congrats, you seem to have pointed out an opinion I have made.

The text you are refering to is in regards to your replies to poor hoseman, who thought he was trying to help this community but it appears you discourage that.

I don't discourage it actually; however it gets very boring seeing the need for these threads all the time. It would be a hell of a lot easier and more helpful to just post something along the lines of:


Because no matter how many of these threads are started, on internet forums around the world, the problem will never be solved, until people realise that opening attatchments is dangerous full stop, unless you specifically know what is contained in the attatchment and who it has come from.

In the same way you should never log onto an internet account (be it a PayPal account, eBay account, Internet Banking Account etc...) via any link contained in an email. Instead, simply open up your internet browser and navigate to the service you wish to use.

Tbh email is the most insecure load of pigcrap ever, and is one the main reasons for the proposed "locked down and regulated" Internet 2.