The Pretty Park Virus Email Warning Is A Hoax

Last significant update: 01 March 2001

This information can be freely reproduced in any medium, as long as the information is unmodified.

Thanks to Lilly Pienzi-Wallace for first bringing this to our attention on 30 April, 2000.

This is a standard enough hoax; the only interesting thing about it is that almost refers to an existing virus. Let's have a look:

  DO NOT OPEN "PRETTY PARK."  It is a virus that will erase your whole
  "C" drive.  

This is not what the PrettyPark worm does. (Note: There is no space between "Pretty" and "Park" in the name of the actual virus). For a detailed description of the actual virus, and corroboration that this "warning" is a hoax, see e.g., NAI's PrettyPark writeup (leaving our site).

It will come to you in the form of an e-mail from a
 familiar person. I repeat DO NOT OPEN.  DELETE RIGHT AWAY.  I don't
 know how it gets into your  address book, but a "friend" sent it to me.
 Luckily for me I had not opened it yet.  She was not as lucky and now
 she can't even start her computer!

Again, the symptoms above are in error, although the real thing does "mass mail" itself.

 Forward this to everyone in your address book.

That would be silly:

1. If one is going to send warnings, at least get it right.

2. This has been known since June, 1999, so any remotely up-to-date antivirus product would recognize it

3. I suspect that the originator wasn't trying to be a Good Samaritan, but rather is a hoaxter: the message cited here appeared almost a year ofter the virus was discovered.

4. As more evidence of the preceding point, there's that attempt to perpetuate the hoax via the "Tell everyone you know!" and "It will hurt your computer" gambits.

 I would rather receive this warning 25 times then not receive it once!

Ahhh, if only we knew the originator. Then we could all send 25 copies of this bogus warning to his or her email address and flood 'm right out! :-)

More recently, this hoax has often been combined with the Internet Flower For You hoax. Two for the price of one; I'll take neither, thankyouverymuch.

Please do not forward this -- or any other hoax -- to all your friends.

Instead, you should reply to the sender -- and as far back up the email chain as you have energy -- informing the originators that this is a hoax. For this particular hoax, I suggest that you provide a pointer to this URL (http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters/hoaxes/prettyp.html)
For virus or hoax info, please see our main page (http://www.umich.edu/~virus-busters/) or go to another reputable site, like The Urban Legends Reference Pages (leaving our site).

   -BPB

visits to this page since 01 March 2001 22:13 EST