Fighting malware and spam

California / Wobbler

The following is the text usually shown in the California / Wobbler hoax email. There may be other variations on a similar theme, as well as other language versions.

Hoax text

PLEASE READ THE BELOW WARNING MESSAGE!!!

There is a new virus - WOBBLER. It will arrive on e-mail titled
CALIFORNIA. IBM and AOL have announced that it is very powerful, more so
than Melissa. There is no remedy. It will eat all your information on
the hard drive and also destroys Netscape Navigator and Microsoft
Internet Explorer. Do not open anything with this title and please pass
this message on to all your contacts and anyone who uses your e-mail
facility. Not many people seem to know about this yet. So propagate it
as fast as possible.
	

VB reminds users: if you receive a virus warning message, do not forward the message to all your friends/colleagues, as it may suggest in the text. If you have verified that the message is a hoax, simply delete it. If you are unsure, forward the message to your IT administrator. Failing that, forward it to hoax@virusbtn.com. It is possible that you may receive a hoax email with a file attachment. Since it is possible that these attachments could be infected VB advises such files to be be treated with the same caution as any other unexpected message attachment and urges users not to open them.

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