Bad Times is a computer virus hoax sent out by e-mail.

Computer virus hoaxes became widespread as viruses themselves began to spread.

Vmyths.com (www.vmyths.com) is a good place to read about virus hoaxes and hysteria.

Some consider virus hoaxes and other chain e-mails to be a computer worm in and of themselves.

A number of computer virus hoaxes appeared in the wake of Good Times.

Do not forward virus hoax e-mails.

Another common form of email chain letter is the virus hoax and a form of cyberbullying.

Some virus hoax emails claim that csrss.

A computer virus hoax is a message warning the recipient of a non-existent computer virus threat.

The program's filters are thorough; they even have the scanning power to quash scams and virus hoaxes forwarded by friends.

"Antichrist", or Anticristo, was a Spanish-language computer virus hoax distributed via email in 2001.

Tuxissa is a fictional computer virus hoax made up by Humorix, a humor website on Linux.

The song makes fun of the exaggerated claims that are made in virus hoaxes, such as legally changing your name or opening a rift in time and space.

The Life is beautiful virus hoax is an e-mail hoax which began circulating on the Internet around January 2002 in Brazil.

Virus hoaxes are usually harmless and accomplish nothing more than annoying people who identify it as a hoax and waste the time of people who forward the message.

As a home computer user you are far more likely to be the recipient of a virus hoax than you are to be the recipient of a virus.

Although the website states that all articles there are fake, anti-virus software makers such as Symantec, Sophos and F-Secure had pages for the Tuxissa virus hoax.

A similar version of this hoax is the Postcard Image virus hoax which refers to another non existent virus known as POSTCARD.

If you want to know how to distinguish such false alarms from real ones, visit the Vmyths site (www.vmyths.com), which has a link to an article called "How to Spot a Virus Hoax" on its main page.

The Tuxissa virus is another parody of the virus hoax, based on the concept of the Melissa virus, but with its aim of installing Linux on the victim's computer without the owner's permission.

Specific computer related alarms are the subject of virus hoaxes; email makes forwarding of texts relatively easy, and the frightening nature of the revelation makes it seem important to pass along, despite any doubts the sender might have.

The virus hoax has become part of the culture of the twenty-first century and the gullibility of novice computer users convinced to delete files on the basis of hoaxes has been parodied in several popular jokes and songs.

In 1997 the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective announced that they had been responsible for the perpetration of the "Good Times" virus hoax as an exercise to "prove the gullibility of self-proclaimed "experts" on the Internet."