“You’ve Got a Virus”: AOL email accounts facing serious virus attacks
“You’ve Got a Virus”: AOL email accounts facing serious virus attacks
By Ray Hanania
Cover of You’ve Got Mail
Everyone with email has noticed in the past few weeks that their friends with AOL email accounts have been hacked by a virus that seeks to spread itself to other accounts through a “PHP” link in the email.
If you click on the link, it will immediately install the virus on your computer and invade your email system. Most virus software programs have managed to block infiltration of non-AOL email accounts but AOL email users are especially vulnerable.
The AOL email system has been incapable of stopping the virus from spreading.
The virus plagued emails are easy to identify. It’s not as if they are tough to see and avoid.
They usually have SUBJECT lines that read something simple like “Hi” or “Have you seen this?”
When you open it, the email has two lines of text.
Something like “Hello, this really work.” It is followed by a hyperlink, that is usually blue in color (depending on the settings of your email software, of course. But most are blue colored.) And the URL Link showcased ends in a “.PHP.”
If you don’t click the link and open it, you won’t get the virus. But because the emails are coming from people you know and recognize, people are opening them and the virus is self-perpetuating more emails.
At one time, AOL was the most popular software to use. But since its launch as “America Online” in 1985 and its trademark voice notification “You’ve Got Mail” (which prompted a 1998 Nora Ephron movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan called You’ve Got Mail), AOL has lost momentum as the email of choice and it has been replaced by GMAIL, which is a far more secure email operating system owned by Google.
The second logo for AOL, used from 2006–2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But AOL made a fortune and has been gobbling up many corporations including Time Warner and Huffington Post, the spam-driven blogging system where anyone can pretty much write whatever they want.
There’s not much you can do except abandon AOL. You can also go through your Contact list on AOL and delete all of your unnecessary contacts, or move them to another system. You can also change your password and hope that AOL gets off its lazy-assed pile of cash and do something.
But it’s been weeks and AOL has done nothing but allow the email system to deteriorate like downtown Detroit.
It’s up to you. Move to GMAIL. Run virus scans repeatedly. Don’t open strange emails, even if they come from email addresses of people you know. Does your Aunt Mabel really send an email to you saying “Hi. Open this?” And include a weird link consisting of strange letters that end in a file extension “.PHP”?
Common folks. Use common sense.
One trick you can use is to put your MOUSE CURSOR over the link. OVER it. Don’t CLICK IT. When you do that an wait one or two seconds, your software will display the true URL web address. So what you read is not the real website destination.
Go ahead, try it and see if it works on your system. Put the cursor over this Web HyperLink:
Instead, here is what the Link should really look like when you put the cursor over it:
(Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall columnist and political reporter. He is the editor of the Illinois News Network www.IllinoisNewsNetwork.com.)
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Ray Hanania
Hanania Chicago political beats and Chicago City Hall at the Daily Southtown Newspapers (1976-1985) and the Chicago Sun-Times (1985-1992). He published the The Villager Community Newspapers covering 12 Southwest suburban regions (1993-1997). Hanania also hosted live political news radio talkshows on WLS AM (1980 - 1991), and also on WBBM FM, WLUP FM, WSBC AM in Chicago, and WNZK AM in Detroit.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media;In 2009, he received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. Hanania has also received two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild, and in 1990 was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
Hanania’s writings have been published in newspapers around the world. He currently is syndicated through Creators Syndicate. He has written for the Jerusalem Post, YNetNews.com, Newsday in New York, the Orlando Sentinel, the Houston Chronicle, The Daily Star of Lebanon, the News of the World in London, the Daily Yomimuri in Tokyo, Chicago Magazine, the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, The Saudi Gazette, the Arab News in Jeddah, and Aramco Magazine.
Hanania's Chicagoland columns are published in the Southwest News-Herald, the Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News and the Palos Reporter newspapers.
He is President/CEO of Urban Strategies Group media and public affairs consulting which has clients in Illinois, Florida, Michigan and Washington D.C.
His personal website is www.TheMediaOasis.com. Email him at: [email protected].
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