Sophos advises of mobile phone virus hoax Sophos, one of the world's leading anti-virus developers, has issued an advisory today about a hoax virus message which is being distributed via email. A number of media organisations have written about the threat, believing it to be true.
Hoaxes are false virus warnings describing extremely dangerous non-existent viruses.
In this case, the hoax warns that a virus will remove all information from the phone and render it useless. Hoaxes often cause as much of a problem as genuine viruses because of the amount of email bandwidth they take up when users are asked to forward them to everyone they know. Hoaxes are a real problem to companies. Our technical support desk still receives more calls about hoaxes than about genuine viruses. Sophos recommends companies adopt an anti-hoax policy to help contain the problem.