The mail claims that when Mars comes within 34.65 M miles of Earth on August 27, it will appear as big as the moon for naked eyes and you will have to wait till year 2287 for a similar spectacle next time. It exhorts you to pass on the news to your friends as this marvel doesn’t come too often in a life time.
[USPRwire, Mon Aug 07 2006] If you receive a mail from your close buddy telling that Mars will reach the closest to Earth on 27th of August 2006, making it appear as big as moon, don’t get carried away. Because the day Mars appears that big, it will be catastrophe on earth as the red planet’s gravity would alter the Earth's orbit and raise terrible tides. And of course no reasons to worry of it, as this is just another hoax mail on its come back trail!
The mail claims that when Mars comes within 34.65 M miles of Earth on August 27, it will appear as big as the moon for naked eyes and you will have to wait till year 2287 for a similar spectacle next time. It exhorts you to pass on the news to your friends as this marvel doesn’t come too often in a life time.
Security experts at MicroWorld Technologies, quoting the information available on the NASA website, said this hoax originally started in July 2005, when Mars was to come close to earth in the month of August. The spammer has just changed the year and started spreading it once again the same time around this year. Some reports even suggested that a similar one was doing rounds in July 2003, when Mars had the closest encounter with our planet on
the 27th of July 2003.
“It’s in the Human psychology to believe sensational gossip told in a rather convincing manner with some statistics and numbers thrown in to corroborate it,” observed Sunil Kripalani, Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing, MicroWorld Technologies. “Once the spammer achieves the first level of proliferation by mass mailing it to thousands, the next level is rather easier with the chain mail syndrome taking over. And when you get it from a close friend with reasonable intelligence, there isn’t much to distrust about it as well!”
There are hundreds of thousands of chain mails doing rounds on the Internet at any given point of time, spreading urban legends, filthy gossip and at many times, highly harmful information. Fear psychosis caused by mails like these can create wide-spread panic, while repercussions of many malicious messages can have severe social and financial impacts too in a wired society.
Spam mails, scam mails and chain mail hoaxes account for more than 90% of the total email traffic on the World Wide Web, says a recent study. These messages choke your bandwidth by pushing the legitimate communication to a corner, occupy large storage spaces and make a severe dent in productive time of organizations.
“Chain mails are just another breed of menace on the web. To counter the spread of such mails, enterprises should protect their business communication with an effective, intelligent spam control system that uses a combination spam filtering techniques. Also, user awareness should be raised so that they can identify and stop these mails, to break the chain before it’s too late,” pointed out Sunil Kripalani.
MicroWorld: (www.mwti.net) is the developer of the world's first Real-Time Anti-Virus and Content Security software eScan for desktops and servers. Its communication security software, MailScan is the first comprehensive e-mail scanner for your SMTP/POP3 Mail Server. MicroWorld Winsock Layer (MWL) is the revolutionary technology underlying these products, powering them to several certifications and awards by some of the most prestigious testing bodies, notable among them being Virus Bulletin, Checkmark, TUCOWS, Red Hat Ready, and Novell Ready. Combining their powerful scanner with MWL technology, MicroWorld solutions provide a Real-Time Proactive security for your systems. For network security of enterprises, eConceal Firewall is the latest powerful offering from MicroWorld.
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