This virus is now spreading over the Internet. This was a joke, which was distributed as an official-looking CERT alert and was based on the movie 'Independence Day'. The Internet is constantly being flooded with information about computer viruses and Trojans. However, interspersed among real virus notices are computer virus hoaxes. While these hoaxes do not infect systems, they are still time consuming and costly to handle.
Much more time is spent every year de-bunking hoaxes than handling real virus incidents.
There are websites that describe many of the hoax warnings that are found on the Internet today. This page will only touch on the issue. I highly recommend that you spend time browsing through the Reference Links to become familiar with the wide variety of hoaxes, scams, and just plain jokes that are out there. I also cover how to identify a new hoax warning, how to identify a vali dated warning and what to do if you think a message is a hoax. Tips For Handling E-Mail 1.