Is this a genuine virus warning?

Viruses and worms
1

I have just received this. Anybody know anything about it?
Or is it a hoax?

“VERY IMPORTANT WARNING”
Please Be Extremely Careful especially if using internet mail such as
Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and so on. This information arrived
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 softwares are
not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who
calls himself “life owner.”

2

Welcome to the Forum :wink:

No, this seems to be a Hoax.

Al968

3

A certain hoax, Microsoft don’t send stuff like this unsolicited and I doubt Norton do either unless you happened to subscribe to some specific alerts, but again I doubt they would have these types of warning.

All this will achieve to to bung up email servers if you complied with the send this to everyone in your address book. Never forward this type of alert.

Trust in your AV and common sense, don’t open attachments or click links in unsolicited emails and never forward unsolicited emails when asked to do so to everyone in your address book.

4

Thanks. I treated it as suspect, so asked for the advice first. Oddy enough, it was sent to me by a Norton addict who is very suspicious of free AV programmes ::).

5

Well you have to question their judgement or conclusions being a Norton addict in the first place ;D