Most computer users are already aware of a lot of things regarding these machines. However, some still need a lot of reading up or learning to do. It's almost magical how some can still not understand what a virus is, although this person has probably experienced more than one or two attacks in his computing life. Nevertheless, what's important about a virus is that we know it's something we shouldn't have in our computer and we definitely should take active steps in keeping it away. Of course, the reasons are obvious - they destroy our files, our computer, or both.

And then, there's also such a thing as a virus hoax. A virus hoax isn't exactly a virus, hence, it's termed a hoax. But it's as damaging nevertheless because when you fall for this trick just once, the effects could spread like wildfire and this could lead to very serious problems. A virus hoax is actually an email that arrives in your inbox and alerts you about a false virus emergency. It will tell you to forward the message to all of your contacts supposedly to prevent them from getting the fake virus. Imagine if you had fifty contacts alone to which you would unsuspectingly send this hoax. And each of your fifty contacts would have another fifty contacts to whom they would again dispatch the false alarm. This turns out to be a chain letter phenomenon which can cause massive damage to routers and servers. AT first, they will slow down Internet connection until they actually crash.

A virus hoax may be harmless on its own but when it starts to be spread out to an enormous amount of email users, this is when it becomes a very big issue. This is why it's extremely important to understand our emails and use our common sense in deciding which message to forward and which not to. Besides, there's no person nor organization that informs people about a virus attack because quite honestly, nobody can tell when such an attack will be launched except those who are themselves behind the creation of such virus. And because it's highly illogical for those who create viruses to warn people about their planned attacks, any attempt that seems to show the opposite should be ignored.

Another way that a hoax can do damage is when it makes you do something to your computer and this causes its instability. For example, a hoax email tells you that a certain file in your hard drive is actually a virus and must be deleted immediately. If you don't know this is a hoax, you will probably go ahead and look for that file and delete it, only to find out that your deletion has been the cause for the system crash you later had to deal with.

Of course, there's no way you could tell at all times when an email is indeed a hoax. But perhaps what you can do is to simply ignore emails whose senders you don't recognize. It can be as simple as that. Besides, this works as a general precaution for preserving your computer and Internet security against other online contaminants such as the authentic viruses, worms, Trojans and the like. One thing to remember as well is that perpetrators of these hoaxes usually obtain your IP address while you're online but not aware. These people have ways of fishing or harvesting email addresses and if you're not careful enough, yours could just land right there on their list.